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B. C. LAW yOLUME 

PAST II 


Edited by 

Dr. D. R. BHANDARKAB, M.A., Ph.D. 
Prof. K. A. NILAKANTA SASTRI, M.A. 
Dr. B. M. .BARUA, M.A., D.Lrrx. 

Dr. B. K. GHOSH, D.Phil., D.Litt. 
Prof. P. H. GODE, M.A. 


PubKshed by 

The Bhandarkab Oriental Research Institute, 

POONA 

1946 



Printed by 6. B. Bingham, Baptist Mission Press, 4lA Lovmr Circular Road, Colciittn, and 
Published by Dr. R. N. Dandohar, MJl., Ph.D., tho Secretary, Bhandarkar ' 
Oriental Research Institute, Deccan Gjrokhana, Poona 4. 



THIS VOLUME OF ARTICLES 

■ contributed by 

HIS FRIENDS AND ADMIRERS 
is presented 
to 

Dr. B. C. LAW, 

M.A., JPh.D., D-Litt., F.R.A.S.B., F.B;B.R.A.S., F.R.G.S., BudphaoamaSiboma]^!. 



PREFACE 


We are glad to complete the second and the last part of the B. C. Law 
Volume. We are grateful to scholars of the east and west for their ready 
response to our appeal, without which it would have been impossible for us 
to perform our arduous task. It is most regrettable that two well-knouTi 
scholars, among the contributors, have left the world before the volume is 
out. We shall consider our labour amply rewarded, if the volume is proved 
to be of some use to scholars. We are thankful to the authorities of the 
•Bhaudaikar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, for accepting it as their 
publication. 

D. R. Bhaudarkab, 

B. M. Babita, 

K. A. Nilakanta Sastbi, 

B. K. Ghosh, 

P. K. Godb. 


, April 2, 1946. 



""SSStents 

THE MALAY VERSION OE THE RAMAYANA 
By Sir Richard Winstedt, K.B.E., GM.G., H.Litt. 

THE OFFICIALS OF THE COURT OF THE KING OF SATARA, A.D. 1822 


Rj/Mr.R.E.Enthoven,C.LE., 0.L.,L0.S. (Retd.) .. .. 2 

REFORMATION OF THE SASTGHA AND REVIVAL OF BUDDHISM 
IN CEYLON IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
By Sir D. B. Jayatilaka, K.B.E., M.A., LL.D., Bar-at-Law , . 7 

ICANCANASSRA 

By Dr. H. W. Bailey, M.A., D.Phil. . , . . . . 11 

THE KAUTILlYA AND THE ]\IATSYAPURANA 

Ri/MM. F. V. Kane,M.A.,LL.M. .. .. .. ..13 

BODHISATTVA AVALOKITE^VARA IN CEYLON 

By Dr. S. Paranavitana, M.A., Ph.D. . . . , . . 16 

THERAVADIN A2?D SARVASTIVADDf DATES OF THE NIRVANA ' 

By Dr. E. J. Thojus, M.A., D;Litt. . . . . - . . . . 18 

ON THE HISTORY OF I IN PALI 

By Dr. S. M. Katre, M.A., Ph.D. . . . . . . . . 22 

MADHAVA, SON OF 6 rI VENKATARYA, AND SAYANACARYA . . ' 

Ry Dr. Lakshmah Sartip, M.A., D.Pb3l. (Oxoh) .. • Si. 

THE NYAYA-VAI 6 e§IKA CONCEPTION OF MEND* 

By Dr. Sadahanda Bhadhri, M.A., Ph.D. . . . . . . 38 ’ 

A PEEP INTO THE IDEAL OF EDUCATION IN INDO-ARYAN SOCIETY 
By MM. ViDHUSEKHARA Bhattaoharya ' . . . . . . 48 

A HIDDEN LANDMARK IN THE HISTORY OF JAINISM 

By Dr. H. L. Jain, M.A., LL.B., D.LErT. . . , . . . 61 

DID THE BUDDHA KILL THE CHILD IN MAN (BHUNA) ? 

By Prof. N. K. Bhagwat, M.A. . . . . . • ... 61 

MAN’S REASON AND HIS QUEST OF TRUTH, GOOD AND BEAUTY 
By Mr. Chare Chandra Dutt, I.C.S. (Retd.) . . . . ... -76 

CALENDAR THROUGH AGES AND ITS REFORM 

By Dr. M. N. Saha, D.So., F.R.S., F.N.I., F.R.A.S.B. . . . 84 

akbar’s tomb at sikandara and its historical REMI- ■ 

NISCENCES ■ _ , • . ' 

By Dr. S. K. Banerji, MA., Ph.D., D.Litt. . . . . . . 103 

KALA-AZAR AND ITS CONQUEST 

By Sir Upendranath BnAmiAOHARi, MA., M.D., Ph.D., F.N.I., 
F.RA'^r^! •• *• •• -III 



vi 


oontekts 


Page 

BUDDHISM IN GUJAB-ATI LTTEB ATUEE 

By Diwah Bahadto KniSHNAiiATi M. Jhaveri, M.A., LL.B., J.D. • • 116 

. A BASIC TENDENCY OE PRAICRTT LANGUAGES 

By Db. A. M. Ghatage, M.A., PhD. .. •• ..118 

THE EVOLUTION OE THE CONCEPT OE &E8A 

By Db. K. C. Vabadaohabt, M.A., Ph.D. . . ■ • • • 123 

AMBASTHA, AMBASTHS. AND AMBASTHA 

By Db. SCbya ICiNTA, M.A., D.Lirr., D.Phil, (Oxon) . . . . 127 

ELEMENTS OE HINDU ICONOGRAPHY AND ITS SOURCES 

By Mb. G. H. Khabe .. ' .. .. .. 140 

SOME UNKNOWN OR LESS KNOWN SANSKRIT POETS DISCOVERED 
EROM THE SUBHASTTA-SARA-SAAroCCAYA 
By Db. Jatindba BniAii Chaudhubi, M.A., Pii.D. . , 145 

KAMMA, OR THE BUDDHIST LAW OE CAUSATION 

■ By Rbvbbend Theba Nabada . . . . . . . . 168 

MUSLIM PATRONAGE TO SANSKRIT LEARNING 

By Pboe. Chintahaban Chakbavabti, M.A. . . ’ . , . , 176 

•BUDDHAKHETTA’ IN THE APADANA 

By Mb. Dwuendbalal Babtta, M.A. . . ' . . . . 183 

KALIDASA’S KUNTALESvARA DAUTYA 

• By Db. V. Raqhavah, M.A., Ph.D. .. .. .. ..^191 

ORIYA LITERATURE IN THE EARLY STAGES 

By -P bop. Pbiyabahjah Sen, M.A., P.R.S. . . 197 

VISHVESHVARA SMRITI 

By MM. Pandit Bisheshwab Nath Red . . . . , _ 207 

RECENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES ALONG THE MAINAMATI 
AND LALMAI RANGES, TIPPERA DISTRICT,' EAST BENGAL 
[with plates) 

By Mb. T. N. Ramaohandban, M.A. . . . . . . 213 

SOME THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION IN INDIA 

By Db. Syai^’Pbasad Mookebjee, M.A., B.L., D.Litt., Bab-at-Law 231 
TAKSA-SUTRA 

By MM. Db. Usies^ Mshba, M.A., D.Ltet., KSvyatIbtha 237 

KAMPILYA ■ 

By Db. Kamta Pbosad Jain, D.L., M.B.A.S. . . 239 

. WOMEN IN THE EARLY INSCRIPTIONS OE’ BENGAL 
By IVEe. Tato Nath Chakbabaeti 

NEKKHAMMA 

By Db. P. V. Batat, M.A.. Ph.D. 


.. 260 


OONTBirTS vii 

HYDEO-ELECTRIC DEVELOEJIENT IN SOUTH INHIA 

By Messrs. G. KimiyAN a7id V. P. Kahnan Naib . . ' . . 266 

VILLAGES AND TOWNS IN ANCIENT INDIA 

Ey Dr. P. K. Aohabya, I.E.S., M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt. .. ..275 

A' EEW THOUGHTS ON HINDI LITERATURE 

By pROR. Lalepa Prasad Stjkuii . . . . ... . . 286 

' SUFIS AND MUSIC 

By Dr. M. L. Roy CHOTnjHtnsY Sastri, M.A., Ph.D. . . 292 

DEVAPUTRA 

jBy Dr. F. W. Thomas, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., C.I.E. .. .. 305 

SIR WILLIAM WATSON 

By Dr. Amarahatha Jha, MJt., HoN.D.LErT., F.R.S.L 320 

THE HISTORY OF THE SRI VUAYANARAYANA TEJIPLE OF BELUR' ' 
(MYSORE STATE) . . 

By Dr. M. H. Krishna, M.A., D.Litt. (Lond.) . . ... . ; 330 

A NOTE ON PERSIAN, TURiaSH AND ARABIC MSS. 

By Ms.. Fazal Ahmad Khan, M.A. . . . . • . . . . 334 

LiLATILAKA— A STUDY 

By Pror. K. Rama Pisharoti, M.A. . > . . . . . . • 337 

LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OF 24-PARGANAS, BENGAL 

{with plates) 

By Dr. S. P. Chatterjee, M.So., Ph.D., D-Lett. . . . . 342 

THE SIGNIFIOANCE OF NEGATION IN HINDU PHILOSOPHICAL 
THOUGHT 

By Dr. Betty Heimann, Ph.D. . . . . 408 

SARVASVARA 

By Dewan Bahadur Dr. S. Krtshnaswami Aiyangar, M.A., Ph.D., 
F.R.A.S.B. .. •• •• •• 413 

THE BRHANNANDIKE^yARA AND THE NANDIKESVARA PURANA 

By Dr. R. C. Hazra, M.A., Ph.D. . . ... . . . . 416 

FURTHER LIGHT ON COLA-SAILENDRA R-ELATIONS FROM TAMIL 
mSCRIPTIONS 

By Mb. K. R; Venkata Rama Ayyar .i .1' .-. 420 

BUDDHA 

By AIadame A. C. Albers . . . . • . 

THE ART OF THE MARATHAS AND ITS PROBLEMS 

By Dr. H. Goetz, Ph.D. . . • . . . . • • • • ^3 

RUDAKi, THE FATHER OF NEO-PERSIAN POETRY 

By Dr. M. Ishaque, M.A., Ph.D. -. . . ^ • ... 444 

INDUS SCRIPT AND TANTRIC CODE 

By Dr. B. M. Barua, M.A., D.Litt. .. ... .. ..461 




THE JIALAY VERSION OF THE EA3MAYANA 

' By . 

Sm Riohabd Wenstedt, K.B.E., C.M.G., D.Lrra. 

Two of tlie classical Malay texts of tlie Ra/mayana have been printed, 
one by Boorda van Eysinga at Amsterdam in 1843, the other by Dr. Shellabear 
in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Boyal Asiatic 'Society, No. 71, 
December 1915, with an analysis in No. 70, April 1917. A. .third Malay 
text .in a manuscript collected by Sir Stamford Baffles, the founder of 
Singapore, and now in the library of the Boyal Asiatic Society, London, 
has been described by me in the Journal of that Society, Part I, 1944. All 
three texts appear to be derived from the same archetype. The Shellabear 
text is from a MS. which once belonged to Archbishop Land and since 1633 
has been on the shelves of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, but notwithstanding 
its age it is in matter the latest, although textually the oldest and best 
preserved. I have commented on the two printed texts in my History of Malay 
Literature (Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Boyal Asiatic Society, 
1940). A feature of Archbishop Land’s text is certain Muslim additions, 
although of course aU three texts are a translation done (probably in fifteenth 
century Malacca) after the hlalays had embraced Islam and borrowed the 
Arabic alphabet and many Arabic words. 

It is interesting to notice how the scribe who wrote Archbishop Land’s 
text has adapted the text of an> earlier original to the taste and exigencies 
of a Muslim court. The contents of the fir^ thicfy-one pages of the Baffles 
MS. are outlined in my article cited above. The story then continues as in 
the Land 'MS., but just before the Land MS. begins, the Baffles MS., has a 
passage m which Chitra-Baha asks his father’s pardon for the ferocity of the 
yoimg Bavana and -accepts the decision that the child be banished. His 
speech runs as follows: — 

* “Lord of the world, not to speak of this lump of flesh and blood Bavana, 
if I had a thousand such children, I would surrender them at your highness’ 
wish. Provided' the name and fame of the Maharaja of all the world do n'ot 
suffer, I am content. Even my life is in your hands and at. your command 
and I lay it at your highness’ feet. For life "with fair repute is good but life 
■without fair repute is naught, because no man shall live for ever and verily 
aU shall' perish. So long as the country, the throne and the fame, of >your 
liighness are safe, my heart rejoices.” When his highness heard these words 
of his son, ho was exceedingly glad and straightway Bavana wm carried'by 
Chitra-Baha aboard ship.’ 

This is the passage which, the scribe of the Land MS. has chosen for the 
commencement of his MS., partly it would seem because he saw a way to 
t-jvist Ciiitra-Baha’s speech into an apology for a non-Muslim epic and partly 
because it was immediately followed in his original by the -visit of Adam, a 



2 


B. C. liAW VOIiBME 


Mnalim Prophet, to Eavana as he is doing penance. This is a translation 
of his exordium: — 

‘This is a wonderful tale famous among all in the monsoon lands, as set 
forth in Hindu books. It is the tale of Maharaja Eavana of the ten heads 
and twenty hands, a ruler exceedingly great on whom Allah Most High 
bestowed four kingdoms, one on earth, one in heaven, one under the earth and 
one in the depth of the sea. All episodes that are not seemly I discard, so 
long as what I recite to your highness be of good report. For I am at the 
command of your highness and the slave of your highness. Fof life "ivith 
fair repute is good. Let mo not die in bad repute, for this world is not im- 
perishable. If your highness’ country be safe, it shall be with good repute. 
And straightway Eavana was carried aboard a ship.’ 

It is, of course, possible that the scribe of the Land MS. was copied from 
ap. origioal of which some early pages were missing but it seems more than an 
accident that he has chosen for his opening page a passage he can twist into 
an oblique apology and started with an episode immediately followed by the 
appearance of Habi Adam. 


THE OFFICIALS OF THE COUET OF THE KING OF SATAEA, 

A.D. 1822 

By 

Mr. E. E. Enthovbn, C.I.E., C.L., I.C.S. (Ebtd.) 

In the year A.D. 1822, a few years after the defeat of the Peshwa at the 
battle of Kirkee, a Maratha dynasty was restored to power in the city of Satara, 
when the British Eesident invested Pertab Singh with full powers on his 
attaining majority. 

In pinsuance of his instructions, a State document was thereupon drawn 
up containing the names of the leading court of&oials, their respective func- 
tions, and rules for their guidance in the discharge of these duties. The 
document, obtained from the archives of the Satara Kings, was translated 
and supplied to me by the late Eao Bahadur D. B. Farasnis some years ago. 
It is a very lengthy paper and, as might be expected, contains much 
repetition, particularly when describing the conduct of the various officials 
while at court. 

I In the following notes I have extracted the really important part of the 
manuscript, which may be of interest to students of the Maratha rdgime. 

The following are named as the most important of the oourt'offioials :~ 


1 . 

2 . 

3. 

4. 

5. 


Pandit. 
Upadhya. 
Karbhari. 
Fadnis. 
Poiaus. 


6 . 

7. 

8 . 
g. 

10 . 


Chitnis. 
Vanknis. 
Bakshi. • 
Havaldar, 
Abdar. 



THE OPPIOIALS OF THE OOHST OF THE KING OF SATAKA 


S 


11. 

Kajimis. 

18. Ttrandaj. - 

12. 

Bhonsle Khanajad. 

19. Bakhtavan. 

13. 

Bhoi. 

20. Chalebargir. 

14. 

Bevapujar. 

21. Cook. 

15. 

Hhasbhardar. 

22| Gondhali. 

16. 

Lagi, Bothati and Ita bearers. 

• 23. Bavaiegosavi. 

17. 

Gunijana. 

24. Kalavant. 


25. ■ Kalamdan bearer. 


Of these twenty-five officials, the Bakshi is stated to have had two assistants 
Itnown respectively by the titles of Jasuda and Bhaldar. The names of many 
of the above officials can be traced back to the Kules issued by Sivaji at the 
time of his coronation at Baigadh in 1674. This document contains over 90 
offices, many of very minor importance. Students of the Peshwa’s Daftar 
will be able to compaie the two State documents, which throw an interesting 
light on the Maratha administration. 

The orders of the Satara King for the conduct to be observed by these 
officials are couched in curiously vague terms. Thus, in the case of fifteen 
of them, we are told that ‘rewards- will be given for the efficient discharge of 
duties, and punishments for the neglect thereof’; and, again, that ‘servants 
of the State, whether old or new, will be rewarded in consideration of the 
length and quality of their respective services’. This conveys little idea 
of the nature of the re^yards or punishments referred to, and leaves the court 
a very wide discretion. Similarly, it is to be observed that, in the case of 
sixteen of these officials, a rule prescribed that ‘a bath should be taken early 
in the morning’, and that ‘they should come to the palace in dean and decent 
dress ’. Presumably the remaining nine officials were expected to follow the 
same line of conduct, though this is nowhere specifically laid down in their 
case. 

At the Satara Court, as at all Hindu centres, the most important official 
was the Pandit or chief religious adviser. Pew matters, indeed, were outside 
his sphere, either in an advisory or executive capacity. It is accordingly laid 
down that he should attend the palace daily. Here he must 

(1) propitiate the family gods ; 

(2) select Brahmans who are to receive daily gifts ; 

(3) appoint others to assist in the propitiation ceremonies ; 

(4) deal with all questions involving an interpretation of the sacred 

laws ; * , • 

(5) prescribe penalties for those who are reported to have violated the 

laws of the Shastras ; 

(6) supervise the preparation of the sacrificial pit (hmda), and the 

erection of the pavilion {mandap) for any special performance 

of propitiatory rites or worship ; 

(7) arrange for the feeding of a selected number of Brahmans at the 

court expense ; 



4 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


(8) on holidays and festivals, pay respect {darshana) to the King, who 

will in tnm salute him in the same way ; 

(9) advise the King, in advance, of all religious festivals ; 

(10) arrange for the reception of distinguished visitors. Brahmans or 
others. 

As a general instruction, the Pandit is enjoined to follow the stars in their 
courses, and to warn the King of their auspicious or inauspicious position in 
connection with public events. If these cannot be postx>oned when the omens 
, are not favourable, the Pandit, by worship and by making gifts to Brahmans, 
should endeavour to modify any possible evil influence. 

The functions of the Upadhya or family priest are very similar to those 
of the Pandit, under whose instructions he acts, attending the shrine of the 
gods in the palace, and helping to procure the various articles, i.e. rice, sandal 
paste, flowers, sacred basil and bel {JSgle marmelos) leaves, with the necessary, 
utensils. He is responsible for making similar preparations in the queens’ 
apartments, where the shrine must be supported and worship carried out. 

He is specially charged with the duty of pouring water over the god’s 
image {abhisTieha), and must keep both the King and his chief minister 
informed of the good and bad influence of the stars. 

The Karbhari is in charge of the King’s civil affairs, including care of the 
official records, and the general supervision of the royal establishment. 
Accounts must be kept under his orders and aU security bonds completed. The 
treasTiry balance sheet and the list of the royal jewelry and other valuables 
must be examined and certified by him. Any defardt or misconduct on the 
part of the menial establishment is to be entered by him in their service records, 
and brought to the notice of the Eling. 

Under the Karbhari, the Padnis and Potnis carry out the duties of 
accountant and treasurer respectively. The latter keeps the pay rolls of the 
establishment, and makes disbursements to the staff accordingly. It is for 
the Padms to keep a record of all orders regarding the dismissal, restoration 
or grant of leave relating to menial servants, known as the Shagiri Pesha, of 
which account must be taken when the monthly payments of salary .are 
made. 

A careftl record is to be maintained of all correspondence with the village 
officials .regarding accounts and viwms. While the Potnis is responsible for 
the chaise of all offerings (wozors) made to the King, the Vanknis makes 
arrangement for the distribution of charitabld’ gifts, i.e. cash, clothing and 
food. These are drawn from the royal treasury or Jamdar Khayia, and it .is 
laid down that every single article of clothing so issued should be separately 
recorded, as well as the receipt of such articles by purchase or gift. 

Such, in brief, were the arrangements for the religious and office work 
of the court at Satara. In addition to those of the Pandit and Upadhya, 
certain ftmctions connected with religion were entrusted to the Devapujar, 
who, in a subordinate capacity, assisted these officials. To this official, in 



THE OmOIALS OF THE OOTJKT OF THE KUTO OF SATARA 


5 


addition to worship and sacrifice in the palace shrine, is allotted the 
important task of finding water for the lying’s meals, and, when necessary-, 
medicine for his indisposition. Elaborate instructions are recorded for the 
collection and care of the various articles required for conducting the rites 
at the time of the numerous religious festivals. Among these, which it would 
be tedious and mmecessary to specify in detail, it fe noticeable that the 
Devapujar conducted the Devak ceremony. I have dealt elsewhere with the 
significance of IMaratha devaks, to which Sir James Campbell drew attention 
in the pages of the Bombay Gazetteer. Here it will suffice to mention that, 
at the. installation and worship of the fruit, flower or other emblems consti- 
tuting the totemistic marriage guardian, the Devapujar’s family provided the 
Snvasini or happily married woman and the Mehuna or happy couple who had 
to bo present on these occasions, and to whom presentations of new garments 
were made, os well os offerings of food. 

We pass now to officials of another description. 

Chief of these is the Bakshi, with his two assistants, the Jasud (messenger) 
and Bhaldar (usher). This officer combined the command of troops, both 
mounted and on foot, with duties resembling those of a military secretary to 
a modem Viceroy or Governor. Thus, it was for him to summon distinguished 
^’i8ito^8 to court, and to arrange for their being properly seated according to 
precedence before the arrival of the King. He had similarly to marshal the 
King’s guests invited to meals, and to arrange for interviews when necessary. 
In order to discharge these duties satisfactorily the Bakshi was es^ected to 
keep full records of the various chiefe, mamdars and other landlords and to 
handle their emoluments. On the accession of a King it was prescribed that 
the Bakshi should receive a new costume, a silver troy with inkstand and 
pens, a shield, a sword and a horse. He also received two betel rolls daily, 
and four on feast dajrs. These betel rolls were prepared by the Havaldar 
attached to the department, known as the Abdarkhana, in charge of the 
Abdar. Water and the usual utensils for the royal bath, as well as flowers, 
scents and unguents, are to be provided by the Abdar, who, with the Havaldar 
and others assisting,, is to be rewarded with a gift of clothes and occasionally 
a goat for their consumption. It is specially laid down that when distin- 
guished visitors offer them gratuities in any form, these may be retained. 

Special interest centres on the Bhonsle Khanajad, among the remaining 
members of the royal establishment, for the King, as a descendant of Sivaji, 
was of course a Bhonsle. The term Khanajad, i.e. bom in the house, is stated 
by Moleswoith to cover the child of a slave. This e3q)lains the menial duties 
aUotted to him. He is, it appears, to be present at court with the royal 
shoes and spittoon, presenting the shoes to the King as he rwes from the 
throne. He is to take his turn unth othera watching over the King when 
asleep or in private consultation. He is to act as a spy on palace intrigues, 
keeping the King informed of any sinister movements; He is also in charge 
of the King’s mvord. It is laid down 'that one of the Bhonsle family should 
always be included in the list of those invited to court banquets. On 



6 


B. 0. LAW VOIiUME. 


occasions the royal standards should be home by the Bhonsle. As body- 
servants of the King the Bhonsles are enjoined to show the greatest respect to 
their lord, even more than is paid by the King to the family gods. New 

clothes are given them at the Basara. 

Of the remaining officials the functions can readily be gathered from their 
names. Thus the Bhoi, known in the south as a Bedar, is the palanq^ 
bearer who forms part of a team under a Naik. The Bhois were supplied 
with a >pal or smaU sleeping tent, a sack for it, and a conveyance for these 
when on tour with the King. At Dasara time the palanquin was worshipped, 
i.e. propitiated, and the oflferings made to it, including portions of a goat,, 
divided among the Naik and the Bhois. At Divali they received sweetmeats. 

The Khasbhardar was the King’s armourer, and had charge of the guns. 
He accoqipanied the King to the chase, and was given the usual offerings at 
the i-iTnft of the Hindu festivals. With the royal weapons in his charge he 
was assisted by the standard bearers, who bore the flags and spears. These 
were described as Lagi, Bothati and Ita bearers. Special orders enjoin that 
the famous ‘bhagwa Jhenda’ should be kept unfaded by constant renewal, 
and the spears brightly burnished. The Ita bearer is entitled to a goat at the 
Dasara. The Tirandaj kept the royal bow and arrows. The Bakhtavan and 
TCpiamdan were charged respectively with provision of the ink supplies and 
the royal pen and inkpot. 

Special interest attaches to the Chalebargirs, and their origin. Bargir, 

, of course, was the name given to the Maratha mounted troops, who were 
provided with State motmts and eqmpment in contrast to the SOledars, whp 
brought their own. But the Marathas were also very widely known by the 
term ‘Bargir’, of which the origin is by no means clear. The Chalebargirs 
are, by tradition found in these records, reputed to be the descendants of 
certain orphans of Maratha village officers discovered by Shahu I and by him 
taken into the service of the court. By conferring lands on. these orphans 
Shahu was able to arrange for their marriages with certain deshmukhs and 
patUs. At the Dasara the Chalebargirs were granted clothes and goats by 
Shahu; but the Satara Cdiut reduced these gifts to merely a goat. 

Tieir duties were those of watchmen, particularly for the royal treasury 
or Jamdar Klianfi. 

It is interesting to note how the authority of Shahu sufficed in this case to 
set at rest any question of caste in regard to the orphan children. Their 
recognition as Marathas seems to have been rendered easier by the substantial 
dowries conferred on them at marriage. 

We come now to the court dancers and musicians, the Gunijana, Gondhali, 
Davaregosavi and Kalavant, who, with the cook, whose functions are obvious, 
complete our list of court retainers. The orders mention by name two Guravas 
or village priests, i.e. Avaji and Sakhu Gurava, whose duty is described as 
to be present in the dcvagriha or palace shrine at the time of worship and to 
xo d charge of the musicians’ instruments, i.e. drum, cymbals, vina, etc., as 
uo as to superintend the Kalavants or dancing girls. The , Gondhalis, or 



TtEFOEMAMON OF THE SANGHA AND REVIVAL OF BUDDHISM IN CEYLON 7 

itinerant musicians and singers, who are called after the Qondhal dance which 
they perform, are enjoined to attend every full moon day in order to dance 
before the throne. At the Dasara they are to receive two turbans for the 
player of the chaundake and a goat for^^the others. Oil and sweetmeats are 
to be given them at the Divali. The functions of the Oavaregosavis, or 
itinerant musicians, are in all respects similar to those of the Gondhalis. 

Mom detailed rules are given for the conduct of the dauning girls. They 
are to attend the palace shrine daily, to dance before the gods, dressed in 
silk garments and wearing ornaments of gold. They take precedence, in their 
performance, of the other musicians. They are to attend when the TTing 
entertains guests to dine, and are then allowed to claim special remuneration. 
At all functions the presence of these Kalavants is regarded as auspicious. 
The Gurava, as we have seen, is responsible for keeping order aTwnng them and 
settling disputes. For the dances musical accompaniment is provided by the 
Gondhalis. At the Dasara richly embroidered saris are to be given to the 
women as well as a goat and portions of the food that has been offered to the 
gods. A special cake known as Kadakani, or a paper image of the same, is 
also conferred on one or more Kalavants on this occasion. For Divali, the 
usual rewards are prescribed. 


REFORMATION OF THE SANGHA AND REVIVAL OP BUDDHISM 
IN CEYLON ‘IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

By 

Sib D. B. Jayatilaka, K.B.E., M.A., LL.D., Bar-at-law 

The eighteenth century dawned upon a politically weakened and morally 
depressed Ceylon. The advent of the Portuguese, two centuries earlier, had 
opened an era of disaster which paved the way to the ultimate extinction 
of the Sinhalese kingdom after it had lasted for over twenty-three centuries. 
By intrigue, and by force of arms, the Portuguese succeeded in occupying 
the coastal districts and the rich and fertile plains of the Low Country, pushing 
the Sinhalese kingdom into the mountainous and inaccessible parts of the 
country. These invaders from the West were not only tyrannical as rulers, 
but also extremely bigoted in matters of faith. They considered it their duty 
to destroy Buddhism and substitute for it the form of Christianity to which 
they adhered. For this purpose they adopted the powerful weapons of perse- 
cution and con-uption. The Viharas and Dagobas within their reach were 
ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed, the practice of Buddhism was forbidden 
within their territorj% and the Bhikkhus were driven to seek refiige in the 
part of the eountrj’' still under the Sinhalese king. Roman Catholicism held 
undisputed sway in the Low Country, where thousands of Sinhalese deserted 
their ancestral faith through fear of persecution or tempted by temporal 
advantages, and received baptism. The practice of Buddhism fell into disuse 



8 


B. 0. liAW YOLXTMB 


together 'with the national names, customs and manners. After 160 years 
of tyrannical rule the Portuguese po-wer disappeared from Ceylon in 1656, 
leaving an evil memory behind it. They 'were succeeded by the Dutch, who 
continued to hold the maritime districts. As rulers, they proved to be much ■ 
more humane than the Portuguese, but they were no less bigoted. They 
persecuted the Roman Catholics, and totally prohibited the observance of 
that form of the Christian creed under severe penalties. There was then the 
strange spectacle of one Christian sect, persecuted by another, seeking 
protection from the ‘heathen’ Sinhalese king, who not only gave them shelter, 
but permitted them to practise their religion without let or hindrance. The 
descendants of these Roman CathoUc refugees are still found in the districts 
where they were permitted to settle by the king. The proselytizing weapon 
the Dutch used was wholesale bribery. By offer of office and honour to the 
men, whole districts were induced to give up the national faith and 
join the Protestant Church. But when in 1796 the Dutch power fell after 
160 years of domination, the Church which thej' had reared on Sinlialese soil 
with so much effort, also collapsed ■with it. Though the efforts of the 
Portuguese and the Dutch to Christianize Ceylon ultimately proved colossal' 
failures, the methods of conversion they pursued left upon the character of 
the people a deep evil impression which took several generations to eradicate. 

If the condition of the Low Country under the Portuguese and the Dutch 
was thus unfortunate in this respect, the state of affairs in that part of the 
country which still maintained its independence was equally desperate. 
During the 160 years the Portuguese held the maritime districts, they sought 
every opportunity to destroy the Sinhalese kingdom and bring the whole 
country under their sway. There was thus almost incessant fighting between 
the Sinhalese king and the foreign aggressor. The utmost the king and his 
people could do was to defend the frontiers by constant watchfulness. This 
task absorbed the whole attention and energy of the Government. Other 
duties, such as education, were perforce entirely neglected. Religious 
practices fell into disuse; temples were deserted, and in course of time fell into 
decay and ruin; and the Bhikkhus, undisciplined and as uneducated and 
ignorant as the laity, forgot their high caUing and lived ignoble lives like 
ordinary householders. It wastnily a period pf national disaster. But just 
when things looked most hopeless there arose the man, who by heroic efforts, 
sustained for nearly half a century, rescued the national faith from extinction, 

and the people from the depth of ignorance and moral depression in which 
they had sunk. 

Saranankara, who effected this transformation and brought about a 
great and permanent re'vival of both religion and learning in the Island, was a 
scion of an aristocratic family, members of which held .high office under the 
king. He was bom in 1698, Even 'as a child he was noted for his piety, 
purity and devotion to his faith, and his mind was from the beginning set 
towards the goal of religious life. So in his sixteenth year, he persuaded 
ma parents, much against their will, to allow him to join the Order. But 



BEFOBMATIOK OF THE SAHOHA AND EBVIVAL OF BITHDEISM IN OEYLON 9 

what he saw within the Chtu’ch filled his youthful with shame. The 
worldly 'and sinful lives which the Bhikkhus led disgusted him, and young 
and inexperienced as he was, he made a solemn resolve to devote his life to 
the task of reforming the Sangha and spreading education among the people. 
In order to undertake this work, he found a knowledge of the Dhamma and 
.even of- secular subjects of instruction indispensable. But no competent 
teachers were available to him, and there was a lack of books,-dealing with even ■ 
such elementary subjects as grammar. Yet -with the scanty help he could 
get, he set about’ educating himself with such earnest ze'al that in a few years 
he acquired a proficient knowledge of Sinhalese, Pali and Sanskrit, and a 
thorough mastery of the Tripitaka. 

In a short time he gathered round him a band of young men as zealous 
and enthusiastic as himself. Living simple and abstemious lives, begging 
their daily food, they traversed the country, teaching and preaching to the 
village folk, reviving their slumbering faith and influencing them to live 
in accordance -with its tenets. Their reforming efforts rapidly spread through 
the cotmtry and soon Saranankara was acknowledged both by the king and 
the people as the virtual head of the Church and the recognized authority on 
Buddhism. He -w'as not, however, prepared to rest contented with the 
success that had been achieved. There was yet another task to be accom- 
plished before the reformation of the Sangha could be considered as com- 
pleted. The solemn ceremony of XJpasampada (Ordination) had been given 
up for many years, and the whole country could not muster five ordained 
Bhiklthus — ^the least number necessary for the ceremony. But nobody knew 
wherefiem Ordination could be obtained. The occupation of the sea-board 
by the invaders from the West had entirely interrupted the intercourse which 
the Sinhalese kingdom had previously had with other Buddhist lands. In 
this predicament Sarananliara approached the king Harendrasinha (1706- 
1739) -with the request that an embassy might be sent to Buddhist countries 
in Further India in order to obtain a number of Bhikkhus to remstitute the 
ceremony of Ordination in Ceylon. Narendrasinha was not, however, pre- 
pared to entertain this proposal. Saranankara, though greatly disappointed 
by this’ refusal, yet did not lose heart. He continued with unabated vigour 
his work of traiiung yoimg Bhikkhus, who flocked to him in ever-increasing 
numbers, and spreading education among the people. When Narendrasinha 
died in 1739, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law, Sri Vijaya BEjasinha 
(1739-1747), Saranankara renewed his appeal. The new kmg was much more 
sympathetic than his predecessor and agreed to send an embassy to Further 
India. Two high officials of the court and five pupils of Saranankara, who had 
disrobed themselves for the purpose, were sent on this voyage of discovery. 
But a great disaster overtook the mission. Near Pegu their ship foundered 
and all on board, except four, perished, together with the costly presents they 
carried with them. The survivors after many adventmes managed to go 
back to Cevlon with the sad news of the misfortune that had befallen the 

V 

embassy. 



10 


B. 0. LAW VOLU>rR 


This was naturally a bitter disappointmont to Sarananlcara, but it did 
not in any way deflect him from his set purpose. With the loyal support of 
his pupils and under the patronage of the king preparations were made to 
despatch another embassy. This time the mission reached Siam where they 
were welcomed by the king who readily agreed to send out Bhikkhus to 
Ceylon. But while preparations were being made, 'news was received of the 
death of Sri Vijaya Rajasinha. The king of Siam naturally declined to send 
out Bhikkhus to Ceylon until and unless the new king renewed the request. 
So the Sinhalese mission started on their return journey but only one of the * 
envoys survived the voyage. 

Sri Vijaya Hajasinha was succeeded by his brother-in-law, ICirti Sri 
Rajasinha (1747-1780), a name inseparably associated with the success of 
Saranankara’s great reformation movement. Under his patronage and with 
his unstinted support a third embassy was despatched which reached Ayuthia, 
then the capital of Siam, and was received with due honour by king Dhammika 
who showed himself most sympathetic towards the objects of the mission. 
It was decided to despatch a number of Bhilckhus to Ceylon under venerable 
Upali Maha Thera. In a great procession attended by the king and the whole 
court, the Siamese Bhikkhus and envoys and the Sinhalese ambassadors 
were escorted on board the ships. But again the voyage proved disastrous. 
On the sixth day one of the ships sprang a leak and began to fill rapidly -. With 
great difficulty they succeeded in making for the port of Muanlakong, a province 
of Siam. The passengers landed and in due course the mission was recalled 
to Ayuthia where owing to various untoward circumstances they were obliged 
to remain a long time before final arrangements could be made for their 
departure. 

When the news got abroad that the Sinhalese ambassadors who had 
been away from their home on this mission for more than two and a half years 
had reached Trincomalee with a number of Siamese Bhikkhus, it caused great 
excitement and enthusiasm' in the court circles and among the people. A 
deputation, headed by the Chief Minister, was at once sent to welcome the 
mission. The king himself met the Siamese Bhikkhus and envoj^s at the city 
boundary from where they were escorted in a royal procession through the 
streets of Kandy to the quarters specially prepared for them. The venerable 
Upali and the other Siamese Theras at once began to prepare the candidates 
for Ordination. On the full moon day of July that year there was held after 
a long period the ceremony of Ordination, when Saranankara and five other 
leading Bhikkhus were duly admitted to the higher grade of the Order. In 
the course of a few weeks several hundred novices were similarly ordained. 

Thus was consummated Saranankara’s work for the reformation of the 
Sangha. 

fifty-four years old w^hen he received Ordination. Not long after 
he was with universal approval elected to the exalted office of Sangha-raja. 
ihese honours however made no change in his mode of life. He Uved the 
same sunp e life continuing his labours and inspiring his pupils, by the noble 



TCSSOANASIRA 


11 


example lie set, to work unselfishly for the regeneration of the people and the 
revival of the national faith throughout the country. The response to kis 
inspiring call was most heartening. His pupils spread in all parts of the Island, 
carrying the torch of learning and reviving the spirit of religion among the . 
people. The temples that had fallen into decay were soon repaired, religious 
worship and practices were restored, and Ceylon once more deserved to he 
called a Buddhist country. 

Saranankara lived long enough to -see the full fruition of his labours. 
To the end he maintained his mental vigour and activity, and the end came 
serene and beautiful in liis eightyfirst year, when surrounded by his devoted 
pupils, he passed away, as he lay listening to the words of the Buddha, con- 
scious to the last. Thus ended the career of the great Reformer, the last of 
the heroes of Lahka, to whose labours must be attributed the present position 
of Buddhism and oriental learning in the Island. 


kAScanasAra 

By 

Be. H. W. Bailey, M.A.. B.Pmi.. 

The story of Kaficanasara is included in the famous collection of tales, 
the Damamtika, wliich was made known from the Tibetan version by I. J. 
Schmidt in his book ’DzangsMunoder Der ITefse uvd der Thor (1843), pp. 3-6. 
This Tibetan version was made from a Chinese text as Professor Takakusu 
showed in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1901. ‘ The correct name 
of the king Kaficanasara was, however, discovered only in the Uigur Turkish 
version by Professor P. W. K. MuUer {Uigurica III, 1922, pp. 27ff., and 
p. 91). He thei'e pointed out the name Kancansari ilig bag King Kaficanasara. 
and Kancasari (pp. 33 and 28), and from these forms was able to correct 
the spellings in the Cliinese and Tibetan {Ka-7ia-di~m-pa~U). The Chinese 
(with the Tibetan) and the Turkish vereions of the tale diverge videly, but 
are based on the same original story. Since the pioneer work of Professor 
Schmidt in 1843 the histoiy of this collection of stories has been elucidated 
in several articles.^ 

To these sources for the tale we can now add the Khotanese Jataka- 
stava. This text, which I have had occasion to quote frequently in recent 
articles, was published in facsimile in Codices Khoianenses (1938, Copenhagen). 
A transliterated text has been in print since 1941 but lies still unpublished in 
the Press. The Jataka-stava is a poem of praise in honour of the Buddha 

1 Pelliot, T'oung Pao, 13 (1912), 365; 20 (1929), 2662.; Journ. Aaiat., 1914, 2. 139; B. Laufer, 
T’oung Pao, 17 (1916), 416-422; S. L6vi, Joum. Aaiat., 1925, 2. 305-332; Vladimirtsov, Mongolian 
Collection of Tales from the PaHcatanira (in Russian), 1926, p. 440 (for the Mongolian vetaon 
of the Domamuka). 



J2 • yU. 0. liAW VOLUME 

for his powers of endurance illustrated from Jataka tales. A similar Sanslcrit 
poem by Jnanayasas was published from the Tibetan Tanjur in the Bulletin 
of the School of Oriental Studies, 9. SSIff. It is likely .to have been a popular 
type of Buddhist composition. 

The story, of the usual Buddhist kind, relates that the king Kuncanasara 
wished to learn a Buddhist stanza and promised any boon in return for know- 
ledge of it. A Brahman Eudraksa Imow this stanza but. claimed in return 
for it the right to bore holes in the king’s body and to kindle lamps in the 
holes. The king consented and being at the point of death was delivered by 
^akra. 

In the Khotanese text the tale is briefly alluded to in eight lines of veme 
(folio 31, recto 1 — ^verso 1). These verses road as follows: — 
kajenesarresta da brriyc uvaro 
suliavaysai ttraik8§ vine jiye bemda 
ovai ttaramdare narrvamdo pharake daiSg ^ 
pilirrv^ stardamde rrum niyade hast^) 
pasvade di-mala tteramdare be^e n 
pasve ham bade khu hauske brramje pasustc ^ 
ysema^amdai kaipa yudai du^ka kire 
Sstavana bg.yso si me pakaip drga 

The translation of these verses may be given as follows: — 

Thou, being Kaficanasara, enduredst, for love of the noble Dharma, 
grievous pains against thy life, thou, whose body they pierced in many places. 
They set pipes about in it and smeared fat thereon. They lighted the garland 
of lamps in the whole body. It burnt at once as bums a dry birch-tree. Thou 
wroughtest for the world diflScult works. 0 enduring Buddha, therefor 
homage at thy feet from' me. 

To justify this translation the following lexical commentary will suffice : 

(1) kajenesarre Kaficanasara, with kdmjana-, which occurs in the 

Khotanese Buddhist text E (edited by E. Leumann) in the 
phrase kdipjani ysirrd kancana gold. Eor izc replaced by mj and 
later j, cf. also pajdb%na panoabhijna (see BSOS 10. 905). In 
the Kharosthx Dharmapada we find similarly paja pafica five. 

(2) dd, older ddta, law is regularly used to render the Buddhist 

Dharma. 

(3) Eor suhavdysai read ahavdysai, 2nd sing, preterite, from Sanskrit 

adhivdsaya-, see BSOS 10.' 904. 

(4) jlya life, is given with other forms in BSOS 10. 691. 

(6) narrvdmde, 3rd plural preterite, &om nirfij- to burst ; the participle 

*niruta would later regtdarly become narva-. 

• (6) daiig place, older diid-, from Sanskrit, 

(7) plUrruva- pipe, is found in one other place in Khotanese, in the 

medical text, the Siddhasara (of which the facsimile is in Codices ‘ 
KTiotanenses) 121 r S plllrUvl ha viit^fid the pipe must be 



THE KAUTlIiiyA AND THE MATSYADDBlNA 


13 


mBerted into it,- which translates the Tibetan gce'us bau-iin 
injecting (?) with the clyster-pipe (Sanskrit neirika). 

(8) stardatpde they spread, 3rd plural preterite of star-. From the 

; present stem star- occurs the future participle Parana- to be 

spread. The past participle is starda- spread {rd represents an 
Old Ijramian rn-t). 

(9) niyade they smeared, with nlya- from *ni-axta-, participle of ang- 

to smear. The Tibetan text has snwm-gyis bskvs-pa smearing 
with fat. 

(10) dl-^nala garland of lamps. The Tibetan text has mar-meH sHvApo 

heart of the lamps; the Turldsh uses yvla torch. Khotanese 
dl-, dlya- (see BSOS 10. 906) is from a Middle Indian form 
corresponding to Sansloit dipa- lamp. 

(11) brrdnije birch-tree. In the Siddhasara 13 r 4 bramjd renders 

Tibetan stag-pa bfrch-tme. The older form of the Khotanese 
word is brumjd which in the text E 21. 42 seems rather to mean 
bark. 


THE KAOTILlYA THE MATSYAPURllJA 

By 

klAHSJIAHOPXDHYSYA P. V. KaNE, M.A., LL.M., 

Advocate, High CJourt, Bombay 

Intensive study of the Arthasastra of KautUya has been going on for 
about thirty-five years. The controversies about its date and authorship 
caimot be said to have been set at rest. Much work remains to be done as 
regards the relation of the Kautiliya to the Mahabharata, the Purapas and 
other branches of Sanskrit Literature. Recently while rea<iing the Matsya- 
purai^a I noticed a very close correspondence between the Kautiliya I. 20 and 
21 and Chap. 219 of the MatsyapurS^a. Some of the most striking passages 
of the Matsyapuraria that agree with the very words of the Kautiliya are 
noted below and such words of the Purapa are underlined. 


Artha^stra I. 20 


( 1 ) 











Matsya 219 

31% ym xnf^ i 

.. . . , _ f f . - , , 

ciW II 


SZfasRT I 

cf^figpETR srrto ^ ii 7. 



14 


B. 0. liAW VDIitTME 


Artlia^astra I. 20 


■ai§T5iT I 

JTRlfe 1 ^45n\'i^5 I 







I. 21 

(4) g jg^jS^rq^SielT 

P(33»»Tri‘ 

( %3T! v.L) 


^V- -» 




(6) ^f^sTRmrgg^ 


(7) sfifOTRT ^Z^T. SRfesR^ I 





Matsya 219 

fireufi? ^ ?Tf^ grtf^i^ cHTT ^ II 

arfes 5t?§5rfc{ i • 

‘g II 

^ era*. I 

— ^vorsos 18-21. 


^ Pi 01:'^ I 
^ ^ el'^ ‘tCl'^ B 
' <^i!ri‘\inCl^' ^ f^RT! ^nflgrs3Tf?[fvreren i 
y's^r<«Tfd ■giaTR crqi n 

32 f^ f g ugfa crejT \ 

— ^versos 11-13. 



tRS c4<.*<lPqcl! I 


?E;*5liyy*iq«i g 



15. 


gi^qRT g ^Rit4 i 24. 


Jggar -firaMHi ^T wzg,«ii i 

29. 

3321^2^2^1 

30. 


It is not necessary to multiply examples. It may be argued by some that 
both works might have borrowed from another work. But there are .other 
considerations &om which it follows that the Matsyapura^a is based bn the 
Artha^astra of Kautilya and on no other work. In the first place it has to 
be noticed that the Matsyapurana adds many details to the meagre statements 
of the Arthasastra. In the story of Indra and Diti, where it is narrated that 
Indra cut Diti’s embryo into 49 parts, the Matsyapurana (7. 63) makes Indra 
say ‘this evil deed was perpetrated by me by relying on (the methods pro- 
pounded in) the Arthasastra’.^ In chap. 272. 22 the Matsyapurana speaks 

' 5^^ ®?ni | 7. es. (AnandSSrama ed.) 


BODHISATTVA AVALOKITE^VARA IN CEYLON 


16 


in a prophetic vein that Kautilya wiU uproot the sons of Mahapadma and then 
the earth will come to the Mauryas.i Therefore it appears that the Matsya- 
purapa knew of the Arthaiastra of Kautilya and its last verse.'* 

The date of the Matsyapurana is far from being certain. It is clear that 
the Matsyapuraipa had attained to the position of a very authoritative work 
on Dharmasastra before the tenth century A.D. The Mit. on Yajfiavalkya 
I. 297 quotes all the nine verses of chapter 94 of the Matsyapurapa as regards 
the images of the nine graham. The Rajadharmakap^a of the Kalpataru 
(about 1120 A.D.) quotes hundreds of verses from the different chaptera of 
the Matsyapurapa such as chapters 216-219, 253-257, etc. Similarly Apararka 
quotes hmidreds of verses from the chapters of the Matsyapurapa on the 
Mahadanas. In my opinion for reasons which cannot be set out here the 
Matsyapurapa cannot be later than the sisth century A.D. 


BODHISATTVA AVALOKITESVARA IN CEYLON 

By 

De. S. Paeanavitana, Archaeological Commissioner, Ceylon 

In my paper, MaMyanism in Ceylon {Ceylon Journal of Science, Section 
G., Vol. II, pp. 35^71), I have shown that the Mahayana Bodhisattva Ava- 
lokiteSvara is still worshipped by Sinhalese Buddhists under the title of Natha 
and that he is referred to as LokeSvara Natha in Sinhalese, inscriptions of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Though there is ample evidence to prove 
that the cult of this Bodhisattva was once very popular in Ceylon, I was unable, 
at the time I wrote the above paper, to quote any Ceylonese inscription or 
literary work in which he is mentioned by the best known of his many appella- 
tions, Avalokiteivara. Since then, I have discovered the Sanskrit rock 
inscription at Tiriyay,^ of about the seventh century, in which the Bodhisattva 
Avaloldtesvara is eulogized, and I have also recently come across four Sanskrit 
stanzas praising this Bodhisattva in the Vrttarainakara-pancika, written in 
Ceylon in the fifteenth century. 

Before I quote these stanzas, a few words may be said about this work 
and its author. The VrttaratndJazra is a well-known work on Sanskrit prosody 
which was much studied in Ceylon, as it was in India, and a very lucid com- 
mentary {pancik^) to this text was written in Ceylon during the reign of 
Parakramabahu VI (1412-1468) by Ramacandra, a Brahmin who came to 


^ mff nut uhikstftrafu n 272. 22. 


^ last verse 

2 Epigraphia Zcylanica, Vol. IV, pp. 161-160 and 312-311 



16 


B. 0. LAW VOLUinS 


this island from Bengal. In the colophon to the Vrllaralnakara-pancika, Rama- 
oandra states that he was bom in a village named Viravatika. His father was 
Gapapati of the Katyayana-gotra'and his mother Devi of the Bhoradvaja- 
gotira. He had two brothers named Halayudha and Mgirosa. Wo do not 
know the reason why this learned Brahmin migrated from. Bengal to C5oylon, 
but on his arrival in this island ho studied the Buddhist scriptures from 6ii 
Rahula Sthavira, the head of tho Sinhalese Buddhist Church at that time, 
who was equally great as a Sinhalese poet, as a master of tho Pali Tripitaka 
and as a Sanskrit scholar. 

Bamacandra espoused Buddhism and, in order to glorify his now faith, 
composed the Bhakli-iataha, also known os Bauddha-iaiaica, in which ho 
extols tho Buddha and lus doctrmo in a hundred elegant Sanskrit stanzas. 
The Sinhalese king Paralnramabahu VT, who was himself distinguished for his 
learning, was so pleased with this work that ho conferred tho title of 
‘Bauddhagama-calu'avarttin’ and other favours on Bamacandra. 6rx Bahula, 
Bamacandra’s teacher in Buddliist lore, spent most of his life at Totagamuva, 
on the south-western sea-board of the island and it may bo assumed that 
Bamacandra himself lived here for some time. In the Sinhalese literature 
of the period, Totagamuva figures as a seat of Natha (AvalokiteSvara) and 
Bamacandra must have himself become a devotee of that Bodhisattva when 
he espoused Buddhism. 6ri Bahula, in almost all his works, expresses his 
devotion to Natha. 

In his comments on tho Vftlaratnakara, Bamacandra gives a full stanza 
to illustrate each of the metres explained in that text. The great majority 
of these stanzas are his own compositions and have as their subject the praise 
of the Buddha and his doctrine, and panegyrics on Bing Parakramabahu 
and Sii Bahula Sthavira. Pour stanzas are addressed to AvalokiteSvara. 

In illustrating the metre called Upasthita, Bamacandra gives this stanza : — 
Sarhsara-maharnava-madhya-maghan = 
Uddharttum=ahar=niBam=ihate yah — 
Mad-duhkham=apakurutad=dayabdhir= 

Nathdh sa> satamT=Avalokite4ah ^ || 

‘May Avalokite^vara, the Befuge of the virtuous and the Ocean of Com- 
passion, remove my suffering — ^he who endeavours, day and night, to deliver 
beings plunged in the midst of the great sea of sarhsara.’ 

The stanza which Olustrates the metre called Ekarupa is as follows: — ' 
Payat=tvam=Avalokitefivaro ‘yam 
Hone dina-jane ‘nukampako ‘yam ] 

Yasy = abhuo= charad= indu-koti-bhasa 
Trafiokyam mahasSi payah-payodhih ® 11 

* VfUaratn&kara-pailcik^, edited by tho Kev. C. A. ^ilaskondha Maha-Sthavira, IN'irnaya- 
^gar Press, Bombay, 1926, p. 39. -This and the stanzas Which follow are given as they appear 
m the printed test. Manuscripts of this work, which are found only in Ceylon, are 'in a very 
corrupt state, and the texts may therefore admit of- amendment. 

® Vf^aratnakara-paneikii, op, cit., p. 39, 



B0DHI8ATTVA AVALOKITE^VAEA IK CEYLOK 


17 


‘May this AvalokiteSvara, who has compassion for the lowly and the poor 
folk, protect thee — Avalokiteivara by whose lustre, equal to the radiance 
of milhons of autumnal moons, the three worlds appeared like the Ocean of 
Milk.’ 

Another stanza eulogizing Avalokitesvara is given in illimt.ra.t.i'ng the 
metre called Framadanana: — 

6arad-indu>kunda-tusara-hara-pavira-parada-8undarani 
Japamalika-mai^-padma-papim— aie§a-loka-hitaish]iam j ’ . 

Jina-maulim=adigurum ja^mukutadi-bhii^igia-bhu^taih 

Fraiqamami samprati 8ampadam=AvalokiteSvaram=:isvaram ^ || 

‘I now worship Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Prosperity, who is as beauti- 
ful as the autumnal moon, or the jasmine flower, or snow, or the garland of' 
pearls, or the lance, 2 or quicksilver, who holds in his hands a rosary and a 
jewel-lotus, who wishes well to the whole world, who has, as his crown, a 
figure of the Conqueror (i.e., the Buddha), who is the foremost teacher, and 
who is adorned with ornaments like the jata-makutaj^ etc.’ 

The following stanza, which illustrates a variety of the Da^^aka metre, 
also praises AvalokiteSvara: — 

Pratidinam= AvalokiteSvaro Natha e§a kriya loka-rak§akari sarva- 
vedi=ti 

Vidadhad=Anupamab sambhramam tyajyase ‘tas tato hina-din= 
anukampi=ti vijfiaya | 

^ara^amssahamssupaimi prabhum tarn madiya-pramodalayam 
Bodhisatvagragaiqyaih nu 

Vrajata sapadi yuyaih ca sarve janab svarga-moksaxthinasestaih 
gurum siddhaye sadhu ^ II 

‘The all-knowing and the incomparable Lord Avalokitesvara, assuming 
that thi^ action affords protection to the world, daily removes fear; hence, 
having known that he is compassionate towards the’ lowly and the poor, I go 
for refuge to that Lord, who is the abode of my rejoicing, and who is indeed 
the foremost among Bodhisattvas. May you and all people who desire heaven 
and final beatitude go at once fiir the accomplishment of your aims to that 
Teacher. May it be well I’ ■ ‘ 

It is doubtful whether Avalokitesvara was a popular deity in Bengal in 
the fifteenth century, so that Bamacandra could have known his name before 
he came to Ceylon. In Siuhalese literary works of that period, he is, as has 
been stated, referred to as Natha, and in inscriptions as LokeSvara Natha. 
He is described as a Bodhisattva whose characteristic was compassion towards 

^ VfitaratnSkara~paHcikS, op. eit., p. 67. 

® This is tho moaning of pavtra, though I do not know whether the use of this word is appro* 
priate to tho alamhSra. It might he a misreading. "■ 

® The reading jaia^mukuta in the printed text has perhaps to be changed to yaiS-makt^,' 

* VfttaratnSkara-paUcihd, op. ctt. The construing of the first two lines of this' stanza 
as they ore found in the printed text presents difficulties and the translation ofiered is only 
tentative. 


18 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


beings. But these literary references, in themselves, are rather vague and 
do not show that the Sinhalese Buddhists of the fifteenth century had 
a clear notion of Natha and the commanding position he occupied m 
Mahayana Buddhism, which as a separate school was then non-existent in 
CJeylon. The modem Buddhists of Ceylon think that Natha is the same as 
Maitreya, but in the fifteenth century it was clearly understood that he was 
a Bodhisattva. If, as is likely, Ramacandra had no knowledge of 

AvalokiteSvara before he came to Ceylon, the references to that Bodhisattva 
in the Vrttara^nahara-pancilca show that the Bodhisattva was in the fifteenth 
century known in this island by his most familiar name and that much of the 
distinctive characteristics attached to him in the heyday of Mahayanism were 
till then ascribed to him by the Sinhalese Buddhists of that period. 

These references in the VrUaratndkara-pancika lend farther support to 
my identification of the god Natha with Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva. 


THEBAVADIN and SABVASTIVADIN dates of THE NIBVll^A 

By 

Db. E. J. Thomas, M.A., D.Litt. 

The study of Buddhism, it has been said, is less than a century old, yet 
it is already paved with dogmas. One of these dogmas is the date of the death 
of the Founder, and this is supposed to be fairly certain. Oharpentier in 
the Cambridge History of India says, 

‘There is now a general agreement among scholars that Buddha died 
■within a few years of 480 B.C.’ 

Oharpentier himself preferred the ^te 478 or 477 B.C., and the nalniilfttinn 
of F. W. Thomas in the same -work results in 488 B.O., but these and other 
slight variations merely indicate some unimportant difference in reckoning. 
The kernel of the evidence, as is well known, depends on the number of years 
between Buddha’s death and the coronation of Aioka, and this is given by the 
Ceylon Chronicles as 218 years. To the editor of the Cambridge History this 
was so little of a problem that he assumed 483 B.O. without a qualm. 

Yet in the same volume (p. 171) Bhys Davids was allowed to •write: 

‘K the date for Asoka is placed too early in the Ceylon Chr 9 nicles, 
can we still trust the 218 years which they allege to have elapsed firom 
the commencement of the Buddhist era do'wn to the time of Asoka ? If so, 
we have only to add that number to the correct date of Asoka, and 
thus fix the Buddhist era [the date of Buddha’s death] at 483 B.C. or 
shortly after. Of the answer to this question, there can, I think, be no 
doubt. TFc can not.’ 

So little did Rhys Da-nds trust this date that at the time when he first made 
the statement he held 412 B.C. to be the most rehable. He referred to other 



THEBAV2DIK AND SABVSSTIVSDIN DATES OE THE NIEVJNA 19 

traditions, but merely declared that each of them was open to still more 
serious objection. If that is the case then we are left in the air with a date 
that can neither be tested nor verified, and it is a mere euphemism to call it 
a workmg hypothesis. Any of the other dates would be equally workable as 
long as there are no other contemporary dates to contradict them. 

Yet there is one source of evidence which Ehjrs Davids and others have 
ignored, or of which they were xmaware— that is, the testimony of the Buddhists 
and others in India. The Indian Buddhists were still in flourishing existence 
when the Ceylon Chronicles were composed, and they had suffered no such 
break as the transference of the religion to Ceylon may have caused. Perhaps 
the most important of these schools was the Sarvastivadin, and their accounts 
put Asoka one century, not two, after Nirvana. Another striking fact not 
g^erally realized is that instances of this dating have also survived in Ceylon 
accounts. But it will be well if the treatment of the Ceylon evidence by 
modem scholars is first considered. 

Ehys Davids was the first to examine the Chronicles in detail, and he drew 
his conclusions chiefly from the Dlpavainsa. He set aside the Ceylon calcu- 
lation of 644 or 643 B.C. for the Nirvana, for that date would put Ai§oka’s 
coronation in 326 B.C., the very time when Alexander was still in India, and 
when Chandragupta had not yet achieved his conquests. Rhys Davids’ 
calculation of the series of theras in the Dpv. led him to the conclusion that 
only 160 years had elapsed between Buddha’s death and AiSoka’s coronation. 
But tho series of kings is 68 years longer. This series of kings begins with 
Bimbisdra, Ajdtasatru, Uddyin and Mu^a (with Anwnddha), so far agreeing 
with the Sarvastivadin list in Divydvaddna, p. 369, and for the first three with 
the Jain list, which gives Ajata^atru’s name as Kunika. Then in the 
Chronicles follow Ndgaddsaka, Snsundga, Kdldsoka and his ten sons. There 
may be said to be agreement also for the last four kings, Nanda (or the 
Nandas), Chandragupta, Bindtisdra, and Aioha, except that Divy. omits 
Bindusara. But none of the Indian lists include the Susunagas, who, even in 
the Mdhdvarpsa, were a new dynasty. Yet they are not a Ceylon invention, 
for the Pura^ias recognize them, but put the whole Sisunaga dynasty before 
Bimbisara. The names are &iiundga, Kdkavartui, Ksemadharman, and 
Kgairaujas. This change of order Rhys Davids accepted. The Sisunaga 
dynasty he held was inserted in its present place in the Chronicles in order 
to fin up the 218 years. This seems hkely enough. We know of contemporary 
dynasties in the Pura^as that have been treated as successive. In any case 
the place of the dynasty in the Chronicles cannot be accepted without query, 
when all the other authorities, even the Indian Buddhist list, omit it. 

Rhys Davids’ calculations were attacked by Biihler, who in the Indian 
Antiquary, 1887 (reprinted as Three new edicts of Aioika. Second notice, 
Bombay, 1878) accused him of misunderstanding the method of calculating 
the succession of theras in the Dpv. Biihler claimed to have made the list 
consistent, but he had to emend the text in several places and add twenty 



20‘ 


B. C. IiAW VOLUME 


years to the^ages of the theras, so that the oldest was 106 and the youngest 
not less than 84. This hardly made the result more plausible. 

Biihler’s main purpose was to substantiate the figure 218, but liis two 
main arguments have broken down entirely. One was the then recently dis- 
covered edicts of Sahasram and Rupnatli. In both of them the figure 256 
occurs. Biihler held that this was an ora dating from the death of Buddha- 
There is no mention of an era, and the word vivasa, which Biihler took to mean 
the ‘departure’ of Buddha from life, and Rhys Davids the departure firom 
home at his Renimciation, is now interpreted as the absence on tour of Adoka 
for 256 nights. Biihler’s other argument depended on Bumouf’s assertion 
that in a Northern Sanskrit text Adoka is said to have come to the throne 
200 years after the Nirvapa. This was the Avadana pataka (II, p. 200), but 
now that the text has been published it is possible to see that the word in 
question, dvitlyalm, belongs to a previous verse, and then a new narrative 
in prose starts: varsadataparinirvrte Buddhe bhagavati Patolipuire ntigare 
rajdioko rajyain kdrayati. These are almost the same words as occur several 
times in the Divydvaddna, and they show that the most important Buddhist 
sect in India, like other Indian authorities, knew nothing of the longer period. 

But there is evidence also in Ceylon works for the shorter period. The 
Dlpavairisa, especially in its earlier chapters, is known to be made up of separate 
accounts taken from the pordyA and other sources. Sometimes it gives an 
event two or three times over or quotes a passage in prose. One of these 
disjointed passages (I, 24, 25) is given as a prophecy by Buddha, where he is 
made to say that four months after the Nirvapa the first Coimcil will take 
place; 118 years thereafter the third Council for the ptupose of advancing 
the teaching: 

pariniJbbute caivmdse heesati patkamaeaTpyaho, 
tdto para/rn vassasate vassdn’ aMhdrasdni ca 
tatiyo samgaho hoU pavattatthdya sdsanam. 


That is the date given in four of the MSS. 

Three, however, insert dve before vassasate. Which is the nriginn-l reading ? 
Oldenberg following the best l/KS. accept 118 as correct, and this is made 
practically certain by the fact that two of the MSS. that read dve have had this 
word inserted later, no doubt to make the statement conform with the calcu- 
lation finally adopted. Oldenberg supposed that a floka had been omitted 
referring to the second Council, but evidently none of the scribes knew of it 
when they a-ttempted to improve the passage. This would not be the only 
instance in which the DJpavamsa has not harmonized its statements, and in 
any case neither 118 nor 218 agrees with the final calculation that the third 
Council was held 236 years after Nirvapa. 


There is another passage in the Dlpavairisa (V, 55-69) which 
with this, though in itself it cannot be called conclusive evidence. T-ilra the 

fonner it is in the form of a prophecy, and it begins with almost the same 
words as in I, 26 : 



THBRAViDTN AND SARVXSTIVJDIN DATBS OF THE NIRVXNA 21 

anagate vassasaie vassan^ attKdrasani ca 
upajissati so bhikkhu sa/mano patirUpako. 

It goes on to state that this bhikkhu is Tissa, who will destroy the heretics, 
and A^oka will reign in Pataliputta. The passage is quite disconnected, and 
no indication is given to indicate who is the prophet. The natural inference 
would be that as Buddha prophesied the third Council, so he prophesiejd this, 
and it would put Adoka 100 years after the Nirvana, a conclusion quite im- 
possible to accept if the other dates in- the' Chronicles are correct. Accordingly 
Oldenberg in a note says that the prophecy was made by the theras of the second 
Council, But this appears to be entirely Oldenberg’s own supposition. It is 
omitted by the author of the Mahdvamsa. 

Yet another iostance has been pointed out by Kem (Man., p. 108) in 
which the shorter reckoning seems to have survived. It is in the Saddham,' 
masamga'ha, a work which appears to have been compiled from the pordna 
much in the same way as the DipavaJmsa, but the distinction between the 
quoted passages and the author’s own words is clearer, for the author adds 
his own matter in prose. In the prose of VI, 5 (P.T.S. ed., p, 47) he sa 3 r 8 that 
Dutthagamini became sole king in LaAkadipa in the 376th year after Nirvana, 
but in the accompanying verse, which he distinctly attributes to the pordna, 
it is one century less: 

, Sambuddhaparinibbdnd dvisu vassasafesu ca 
chasaitaiy atikkantesu rdjdhu Dufthagdmini. 

Here too the author has been using pordna matter, such as existed before the 
schematization of the Cluonicles came into play. 

Wo thus have two clear cases where Ceylon authors are quoting other 
authorities, and where they appear to have preserved the Indian tradition of 
100 yearn. In the Sarvastivadin tradition 100 years is preserved in the Divyd- 
vaddna and the Avaddna Pataka, and the Sarvastivadin list of kings agrees 
with the Puranas and Jains in omitting the fefiunagas. The ‘ agreement among 
scholars’, of which Charpentier speaks, is one based on the Ceylon authorities 
alone, for the additional evidence that Biihler thought he had discovered is 
non-existent. But where are the scholars who are in agreement, except 
in the sense that others have accepted the statements of a. few investigators ? 
And of what value is that? We have seen what Rhys Davids’ conclusion 
was, and his doubt about any positive decision is shown where he said; 

'It is a long step fioJh saying that the succession of Theras is not 
necessarily untrustworthy, or even that it is probably correct, to saying 
that it is entirely conclusive.’ 

Biihler’s words were equally cautious and non-committal: 

‘I do not see that there is at present any possibility of saying whether 
the belief prevailing in Aioka’s .time, that between the Nirvana and the 
king’s coronation upwards of 218 years had elapsed, deserves implicit 
credence or not.’ 



22 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


We can now say that there is no evidence for saying that the belief prevailed 
in A4oka’s time. We only know that it prevailed some five centuries later 
in Ceylon and in Ceylon alone. 

These are the real conclusions of scholars who have devoted most study 
to the subject. Neither of them was willing to risk a positive statement, and 
their conclusions were certainly not those for which Charpentier claimed that 
there was a general agreement. Further than this it can he pointed out that 
even so no .general agreement exists. In 1932 Dr. Tokumyo Matsumoto 
published a work on the Prajnaparamita literature,^ in wliich he quoted and 
rejected Jacphi’s view that the year of Buddha’s death was 486 B.C., and his 
following words (rendered into English) are: 

‘I think that I must attach myself to Professor Ui, who on the basis 
of extensive and not one-sided material has calculated the year 386 for 
Buddha’s death. It would take me too far to discuss his arguments here 
in full, but I hope iu a not too far distant time to be able to set them before 
specialists and also the material that he has used.’ 

Dr. Matsumoto’s actual words are ‘in abschbarer Zeit,’ and if this time 
at present is not easily discernible, we may at least hope for a discussion some 
day which will remove any tendency to dogmatic slumber. 


ON THE HISTORY OF I IN PALI 

By 

Db. S. M. Kateb, M.A., Ph.D., Poona 

Among the Middle Indo-Aryan languages Pali is unique in adhering to 
the tradition of the Rgveda according to which every is pronounced 

without occlusion and represented in writing by a separate symbol for 
In non-Rgve(fio and classical Sanskrit and in other MIA languages -dffi)- 
reappears, in a large measure due to the influence of the morphological s 3 ^tem, 
and to a smaller extent also because the speakers of these languages had 
-d{h)- as an occlusive. On the other hand certain of these phonemes, not 
influenced by either of these conditions, subsist in classical Sanskrit and MT/y 
as -Z-.8 The written tradition on which we have to depend solely for this ancient 
period is not quite definite on the values of these phonemes in the different 
vocables where they appear. Although even from the most ancient BrahmJ 
separate characters exist for I and I North Indian orthography loses these 
distinct signs after the fifth century A.D.* On the other hand the southern 


^ DiePrajiiapSrcmita-Literatur, Bonner Orientalistisohi Studien. Stuttgart, 1932. 

® This qnnbol -will indicate both the a^irate and the simple stop in the subsequent 
discussion. ' ^ 

9 Jules Blooh, L'indo-aryen, pp. 64>65. 

4 LCdeb, JRAS, 1911, pp. lOSlff.; Antidoron, pp. 2942. 



ON THE HISTOEY OE I IH pSlI 


23 


orthography, influonccd by tho oxiatonce of J in those regions, has preserved 
both symbols, and as wo come down we notice the increasing use of I in the 
place of in fact most South Indian MSS. of Prakrit passages invariably show 
this I, and oven with respect to Sanskrit vocabulary for which the oral tradition 
was never waning, this frequent supplantmg is witnessed to a disconcerting 
degree. 

The gradual disappearance of the characters for I and Ih may be best 
scon from tho fact that while -rf/i- and ~dy~ are preserved in the palm-leaf MS- 
of A^vaghosa’s Kalpanaman^tika, -d- is invariably represented by -f-A In 
the Junugadh inscription of B>udradaman, the only forms where -d~ is repre- 
sented by -I- are ppranambhir), -pdlikaivat and vyala- for which the classical 
forms already show 1.” It is not possible to say with precision as to the timp. 
and locality of tho complete disappearance of the phoneme I, for even as late 
as G34-35 A.D. the Aiholo inscription of Pulikeiiin II shows I in pensonal names 
like Kalidasa, Alupa-, etc.® In other records both forms occur side by side. 
Moreover it is also not possible to say whether the orthography reflects the 
real conditions of speech in tho particular locality when such forms occur. 

In his very interesting paper ‘Zur Geschichte des 1 im Altindischen’ 
LflUEBS has shown some of the obvious mistakes of orthography so far as Pali 
is concerned such as dalidda-.* But it is fortunate that Pali texts, written 
principally in Simhalese, Burmese and Siamese scripts, have preserved for us 
a much better state of affairs. In. fact the number of vocables which show 
both I and I are extremely limited; and of these one of the two can be shown 
to bo a false form with the help of comparative philology; or if our material 
is sufficiently reliable we can see the influence of northern MIA forms with a 
I in the place of tho normally expected 1. On the nature of the signs for Z 
and Ih nothing further can be added to what LVdees has written in the above 
paper. 

Geiqee has shown that Pali -Z- goes back either to OIA -4’ or -tZ- which 
was certainly cerebralized in the pre-Pali stage, and occasionally in a limited 
number of examples to Initially the d~ of the bases ,Jddh- and ,Jdamd- 
are cerebralized and become in Pali i/^aZta- and ^/dasa- respectively. j 

when combined with prepositions gives us a base as we shall see 

below. Similarly -?7i- results from -^A-. 

In the sequel I am considering all the forms containing -If- dr as cited 
in the Pali-English Diciicmary (PED) of Bhys Davids and Stede published 
by the Pali Text Society, as supplemented by ^he Critical Pali Dictionary 
(CPD) of Teenokneb of which as yet only ten fascicules have been published. 
Tn view of tho present nature of the paper, with limited space, I have omitted 
a consideration of the personal names, as recorded now in Maialasekeba’s 
Dictionary with the large corrigenda and agenda which Dr. B. C. Law has 
published in his excellent review ot this work.® The treatment is divided 


1 Antidoron, p. 290.. " ib. ’ ib., p. 297. * ib., p. 206. 

6 Pali Lileratur tind Spractie, §42 (pp. 68.9), §43 (p. 59). ' ■* Indian OiiJture 


24 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


into two main sections : (1) definite instances of 'd{h )~ : -lih)- correspondence, 
with a supplement of the correspondence -I- < -n- (and of -I- < -»-) ; (2) cases 
which do not fall within the above category according to our present state of 
knowledge. It has not been possible for the writer to verify all the citations 
' from the principal sources utilized by him; the editing of Pali texts, with a 
few exceptions, is still in an imsatisfactory state of affairs and the remarks of 
those critical scholars Dines Andehsen and Holmer Smith, deploring that 
the list -of their corrections and additions exceeds 500 entries for the first 234 
pages of their Critical Pali Dictionary, resulting from a retesting of the com- 
• mentaries.and a closer analysis of classical passages, ^ indicates the necessity 
of the comparative study of Pali vocables linguistically as well as text-critically. 

I. OIA -d- > PXLi -Z- 

1. aggala ‘latch*pin, cross-bar’; ‘gusset’; and cmpds °-p7uilaka~, ^-vatti, 
°-suci, etc. [< OIA *argadah seen in 6at. Br. sdrgadafi', elsewhere Sk. Pk. 
ttgrgroZa-.] 

2. ato-, ‘the claw of a crab’. [< ♦cife- from *r<Zo- ,2 cf. Gk. drdis ‘point’ 
and Sk. aZam ‘sting in the tail of a scorpion (or a bee) ’.] 

3. dTfira-, ‘ i.e. visaUi, only with reference to eyelashes ’ ; ^-ahkliin — visala- 
netta; °-pamha = bahala-scimyatarpakhuma', ^-bhamuka viaala-akkhiganda-; 
cf. also aldra- ‘thick, massed’, etc. Kebe explains the word alara as ‘bent, 
crooked, arched’. [Connection with OIA vddra - : Pa. M[om- doubtful, but 
see nddraksa-. Possibly < arada- ‘having high horns’ : *arala- with meta- 
thesis of r and I, If the reading is uldra- in the same significance, compare 
Vedic urdnd- ‘making broad or wide, extending, increasing’, in which case we 
have -n- > -Z-.] 

4. alaka ‘thorn, sting, dart, spike’; ‘peg, stake, post’. [< *ddaka-, cf. 
*0^0- above.s] 

6. oZi ‘dike, embankment’. [Cff. Sk. odij Npr. of an aquatic bird : Pa. 
olii ‘a kind offish’.] 

6. dlavaka-, dlavika-, dlavi* ‘forest-dweller’. [< Sk. dtavika- : MLA 
ddaviya-.J 

• 7. uldra- ‘great, eminent, excellent, superb, lofty, noble’; -id; 

— an-uldratd ‘insignificance’, anuldra-, '^-ka, anoldrika- ‘subtle’; sv^ra- 
‘ magnificent’. [Geiger §43, 2 < Sk. ud-dr&-. Pisohel §246 (p. 172) quotes 
Amg. urdla-, ordliya- as from Sk. ud-drd- as an iUustmtion of the change of 
-d- :d: -r- (and in Mg. -Z-) ; but it is evident that Amgl urdla- < *urdla- < O TA 
*urdda- which is probably this uddrd- with metathesis and cerebralization of 
d after ro in *urdda-.'\ 

8. ulu ‘lunar mansion’. [Sk. udu fn. ‘a star’, n. ‘lunar mansion’ : Pk. 
udu, Defii ulu-hhanda-, ‘ meteor’, ‘fire-brand’.] 

1 Page xxvii on Preface to CPD, vol. I, part 6. 

s LCdem, Ali nnd Ala in Festschrift Ernst Kuhn, pp. 313-4. s pp_ 317 ^ 

^ Sylvain Usn, Observations sur .nne langue pr4canonique du Bouddhism, JA, dixidme 
*6ne. tome 20, 496-512, gives aia»ai<ofai«.. . 


ox Tlin HISTORY or 1 IN PXW 


25 


0. iilrtmpa raft. boat’. [Sk. vdvpa mn. 'raft or float’: Pk, ti^upa-, 
‘ itduva-. For tho nasal in Puli sco Geiger §43.] 

10. cffl-(A-n)- ‘rum. wild goat*; ‘tho plant Cassia Tora’ (cf. Sk. 
tdngajah), [Sk. cda{ka)- ni.; Pk. crfa-, crftifrfra-, edaya, ela-, elaga-, cfaj/o-.] 

11. cfaka-n, threshold’ (?). [Cf. Sk. lox.cdfiA’fl- mn.,cdo/:awj‘ a shrine’.] 

12. olumpika ‘belonging to a skiff*. [Cf. tthimpa- above; BSk. odnm~ 
pika-, ohimpika-\ < Sk. audnpa-, ajtdupika-, Punini 4.2.75.] 

13. kakkhala- ‘rough, hard, harsh*. °-iya.. a-kakkha-la-. 

[Sk. kakkhaia- ‘hard, solid’; Pk. kakkhala-, kakkhaJa-, For the change -U > 

see Geiger 38 (j). 50) through an intomicdiarj' '‘-d-. The examples cited 
oro: kheJa-, cakkat'Sla-, phalika-, Alavl and Lala-.] 

1 4 . kandaJa - ' Npr. of an c.sculent wator-lily ’. Cf. also the f-form kandala- 
‘Npr. of a plant- with white flowers’. [Sk. lex. kandalah ‘a kind of esculent 
water-lily’: Pk. kandala-.] 

15. kabalikd 'a bandage, strip of cloth put over a sore or wound’. Cf. 
Sk. kavalika ib. [On tho form kabala- generally seen in Pali MSS. see LVders, 
Anlidoron 307-8 where tho Central Asian MSS. of Pratimoksa-sutra show 
kabada-, kapada-, and the Mahavyutpatti 1ms kavada-‘D. mouthful of water’ 
also knon*n to Su.<ruta.] 

10. karala- ‘a wisp of grass’. The form quoted by PED is tina-karala 
in this sense, so that karafa- should merely mean ‘handful’. Tho graphy is 
- not certain ns under karala both forms are shomi, while under tipa- only the 
/■form is indicated, with tho identical reference. [Cf. Sk. *kara-ia.-, *kara~la- 
for tlio and -I- forms respeotivoly; Sk. karetah ‘finger-nail’, for extended 
forms. Cp. also kadayali ‘removes the chaff’, kadamkarak, kddamgaraJi 
‘straw*. Puli karala- must therefore go back to ^kara-da-.l 

17. kalara- ‘projecting (of teeth)’, kalarika ‘kind of large (female) 
cldphant’, [Usually connected with Sk. karala-, but cf. Maitr. Sam. kardfak 
'Npr. of Gannon’, and karatali 'elephant's temple*. Possibly < *kadara- for 
*karada-y /mrafa/i.] 

18. kalarika ‘kind of (she) elephant’. [Cf. kalarika above.] 

19. kalimb{h)aka ‘a mark used to keep tho interstices between the threads 
of tho kathina oven, when being woven’; tho v.l. is kalimpaka-. [Etymology 
is uncertain, but cp. Sk. kadambah ‘Convolvulus ropens, the stalk of a pot- 
herb; and kaldmba[ka)h, talamfiM/rw ‘Convolvulus repens’.] 

20. kahbara- ‘body, corpse, dead body, carcass; the step in a flight of 
stairs’. [BSk. kadebara-: Sk. kalevara mn., Pk. kakvara n.] 

21. kala{ka)- ‘dark, black’: also indiscriminately kdla\ fern, kalika. 
[< *kada-.^] 

22. ki^afi ‘onjoya, plays, sports, dallies*; abIn-° ‘plays a game’; saw-® 
‘plaj's, sports’; ki^iia- (and wX*-®, »f-®); kilanaka’ toy’ (and vi-°); Bland ‘sport, 
amusement’; Bid ib.; Bldpanaka- ‘toy’, ‘player’; Jdilikd 'sport’; ni-BUtdvin 

■ ‘playfiil’. [Sk. /fcrtrfafi, in ^Iv. : Pk. i?tei.] 


> LODEits, Antidoron, p. 300; SoauADEn, SrahmawdyS I, i, 21, f.n. 1. 


26 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


23. u^a-kiiiita- ‘singed, boiled*. [Sk. kUdayati (9iV. hiilayatas) ‘bums, 
scorches’ ; cf. kru^ati, krU^ayati ‘becomes thick, makes thick’ ; whence perhaps 
‘boils, thickens by boiling’.] 

24. fceZanS ‘desire, greed’; poii-®, pori-®; kelayaii ‘fondles’: kelayana 
‘playfulness’; kelkyita- ‘desired, fondled’; ke^i ‘play, sport, amusement; 
attachment, lust, desire, greed’. [Der. from ktla- (No. 22 above).]’ 

26. ifc7ieZo‘ phlegm, saliva, exudation from the skin’ ; khelakapa-, kJieldsika- 
‘eating phlegm’; vik-kheli-kd ‘slobbering’. [Sk. khetali ‘plilogm’, ksvedah 
‘poison’, ksvedate ‘emits sap, exudes’: Pk. khedaya m. ‘poison’, kliela m. 
‘phlegm’, khelosahi ‘medicine for poison’.] 

26. galati ‘drips, .rains, drops’; galaygti ‘drips, drops’; galita- ‘rough’, 
a-gaUUi- ‘soft’; gala- ‘drop’, ‘swelling’, ‘(fish)hook’; galagalam gacchati ‘goes 
from drop to. drop’. [Sk. gadati ‘distils, drops’, ga^ah ‘goitre’, whence galati 
‘trickles, oozes’: Pk. gaZai.] 

27. ati-galeii (according to PED), ati-gdlayati (according to CPD) with 
identical quotation; the reading is uncertain here : ‘ causes to perish’ ; upagalita- 
‘flowiug out’ ; vi-galUa- ‘dripping’ ; vini-galati ‘drops do-wn’. [Cf. prec.] 

28. ‘(iron) chain for the feet, a fetter’. [< Sk. nigada- mn. 
‘shackle, fetter’ ; TiigrodiZa- ‘ chained, fettered’ ; Pk. niala-, ni-adia-, nialia-.] 

29. gaiagaldyati ‘roars, crashes, thunders’. [Cf, Sk, gard-, garj-’, Pk. 
gadayadai,} 

30. gojoci ‘a kind of shrub’; “-lofo ‘kiud of creeper’. [Cf. Sk. gudach 
gudMcl, gudiici, gudiicikd ‘Cocculus cordifolius’.] 

3 1 . grttZo ‘ ball ; sugar, molasses ’ ; sa-® ‘ cake ’ ; gvld ' swelling, blight pimple . 
pustule’; gvlikd ‘a little ball, globule’; sam-gulikd ‘cake’. [Sk. gu^ah ‘pill, 
sugar, molasses’ ; ‘pill’ ; gu^ikd ‘pill’ ; in this latter sense cp. gupikd wliich 
has besides the meaning of ‘small pustule’, gudaka- (f. gvdikd) ‘prepared with 
treacle’. Por Z-forms see gulah, gulikd, gruZa.] 

32. golaka ‘a ball’. [Sk. godah ‘a fleshy navel’, golah ‘baU’, golakahi 
Pk. golaga-, goUya-.} 

33. cakkavdla- ‘circle, sphere’. [Sk. lex, cakravdtah ‘limit, boundary’, 
°-vdddh ‘circle’, ^-vdlali ib. : Pk. cakkavdla-, 1 


34. clriUkd ‘cricket’. [PED suggests the origiu as a contamination of 

. Sk. cm avd jUUikd, cliilli ; but cp. Sk. ‘a land of bird’ and the following 

variant forms for ‘cricket’: cirivdkali, cirikd, clrukd, cUikd, cUlikd, ciUakah, 
cillatah, ciUadai,: all these point out to the onomatopoetic form clri-, 
to PMIA *cinda{ka)-, Hiridikd, from a possibly earlier *cmtg(ka)-OT *ciritikd.] 

35. cada ‘swelling, protuberance, knot, crest’; addha-^, kanna-^; ciilaka. 
‘having a top-knot’, paUca-^, [Sk. c4dah ‘protuberance’, cuUka- ‘crested’.] 

36. cHlanikd' (from HuJanika- ‘lesser’). [PED suggests derivation 
from culla- ‘small’, but -\- indicates *c'udanika-< Hdda-na-ka-, with ^cSda- 
< *cudda- (p < lesudra-. Cf, Sk, cuftayati, cuddayati ‘becomes small’.] 

jj, ^kiggahi- a hole’; foZa-® ‘a key-hole’, [< *cfeigrgra^a- from an earlier 

c iggoja- (?)<Sk. *chid-ga-ia-', cp. Kohkani ^{gZa ‘small pieces, parings’; 

^zgam‘athinparingofbamboousedasapin’.] ^ ^ 



ON THE HISTOSy OF I IN PXLI 


27 


38. jala ‘dull, stupid, slow’. [Sk. Ja^a-, Pk. Ja^a-.] 

39. /amia ‘tuboroso’; [< *takka-da-, cf. Sk. iakrahva, 

takrabhakta ‘a land of shrub’ whence *takra-fa-.] 

40. falcti ‘strikes, beats, flogs’; awtt-*’; som-m-; abhitalita-; tala- 
‘ beating, clapping of hands; key’; tali ‘strike, blow’. [Sk. tadayaii ‘beats, 
strikes’; ta^ah ‘blow; iadakah 'a land of key’; iadi ‘a kind of omamenV; 
(alah 'musical time’; talakam, ‘lock’; Pk. iadei, tada-, taki, tala-.] 

41. daddalhati ‘blazes, shines brilliantly’, daddalhamana (with . v.l. 
Jaddhalamdna). [Geiger §186 gives daddallati, and §191 daddallamana- < Sk. 
jajvalyatc as intensive forms. The readings are less than certain and may 
perhaps go back to a *daddJiala- represented by the MSS. in either of these 
two varying forms. The uncertainty of the orthography may also be seen 
from a parallel difference wliere Geiger show's the I form in opposition to 
PED 1-form in bhindivala §38.6. If the reconstruction is accepted as daddha- 
lati, the form goes back to a *dagd/ia-pa; *dagdlia-4a-.] 

42. do/iala ‘craving, longing (of a pregnant w'oman)’; dohaldyati ‘has 
cravings’; dohalini ‘a pregnant woman having longings*. [Sk. daurhrda-: 
PMIA *do7iada-, later Sanskritized as ddhada-i Pk. dohala-.] 

43. un-nala- (also v.l. ttmala-) ‘insolent, proud, arrogant’. [Perh. 
< Sk. *un-nata-, cf. unnalayaii ‘ jiunps up’ and Pk. •umamia-, unnalia- ‘lifted, 
elevated’. With these forms Sk. uyi-naid- and un-namati may be compared.] 

44. naja- (and nala- also) ‘a species of reed’; mla-pin ‘a land of aquatic 
animal’. The reading nala is given secondary importance by PED which 
also records nalini ‘a pond’; but LUdebs cites the following l-fo^ms in Pali; 
nala-, nali, Nalinika, Nalini. [Sk. naddh (l^v. naldi) ‘reed’, nadinl ‘reed he'd’, 
nalali, nalini ‘lotus flow'cr’: Pk. nala-, nalini.] 

46. dnjana-nali ‘collyrium box’; ndlikd ‘stalk, shaft, tube, pipe’, jpo-*; 
na[rholloAV stock, tube’, pa-®. [Sk. na^'tubular stock’, ‘the box of a wheel’, 
nddikd ‘hollow' stalk ’ ; later Sk. nala-, nalaka-, etc. : Pk. nadi, nala, nali. See 
No. 44 above.] 

46. Ma]jl-cra ‘cocoanut’, ‘cocoanut tree’; ®-ffei- 'belonging to the c. tree’. 
[Sk. lex. nadtkelah, ndMdaly, Su^rata natikerali, ndlikeraTi, Mbh. nalikerah, 
^-kelah: Pk. riariera-, ^-ela-, naliara-, ®-cra-.] 

47. nila ‘nest’! [Sk. nidd- (P-v. nild-) mn. ‘nest’ : Pk. nidda-, m#o-.] 

48. pdli (also pali)^ ‘line, row', norm’. [< *pddi-\ Sk. pdliJi f., but cf. 
pan-pa0 ‘order, arr*angement, succession’ whence *pdti-'. *padi-.] 

49. vi-paliyati ‘destroys’, ‘is destroyed’, passive from vi-pateti ‘rips 
open, destroj's’: Sk. vipStayati ‘destroys’. [< *vi-padiyaH firoiii a - *padeii, 
*paleti.] 

60. pilsvla-, pliasnla, phasuU ‘rib ’. [Sk. pdrMb ‘rib ’ whence *parhi-ta-, 
*pam-da-\ the aspiration may be due to analogy with other forms for which 
see Geiger §40.1 (p. 67 f.).] 


1 LOdebs, O.C. 302. 


26 


B. C. I/A.W VOLtrME 


23. twa-mta- ‘smgei, boiled’. [Sk. kmyaH O&v. Mlayaias) ‘bums, 

scorches’ ; of. krMayaii 'becomes thick, mokes thick’ ; whence perhaps 

‘boils, thickens by boiling’.] . „ , , . , r t- 

24. Ulaw ‘desire, greed’; poet-®, pan-^\ kelayah fondles : k^yana 

‘playfulness’; kel^yiia- ‘desired, fondled’; kdi ‘play, sport, amusement, 
attachment, lust, desire, greed’. [Der. from ktla- (No. 22 above).]- 
■ 26. fchela'phlegm, saliva, exudation from the skin’ ; kh^lakapa-, khelasika- 

‘eating phlegm’; vik-kheli-ka ‘slobbering’. [Sk. klietah ‘phlegm’, ksvt^^ 
‘poison’, k§ve^te ‘emits sap, exudes’: Pk. khcdaya m. ‘poison , khela m. 
‘phlegm’, hhelosahi ‘medicine for poison’.] 

26. galati ‘drips, .rains, drops’; galayati ‘drips, drops’; galiia- ‘rough’, 
a-galita- ‘soft’; gala- ‘drop’, ‘swelling’, ‘(fish)hook’; galagalam gacchati ‘goes 
from drop to drop’. [Sk. gadati ‘distils, drops’, gadah ‘goitre’, whence galati 
‘tricklea, ooaea’ : Pk. galai.] 

27. aii-galeli (according to PED), ati-gaUiyati (according to CPD) with 
identical quotation ; the reading is uncertain here : ‘ causes to perish ’ ; upagalUa- 
‘flowing out’ ; vi-galiia- ‘dripping’ ; vini-galati ‘drops down’. [Cf. prec.] 

28. ‘(iron) chain for the feet, a fetter’. [< Sk. nigada- mn. 
‘shackle, fetter’ ; nigadita- ‘ chained, fettered’ ; Pk. niala-, ni-adia-, nialia-.} 

29. galaga^ayaii ‘roars, crashes, thunders’. [Cf. Sk. gard-, garj-‘, Pk. 
ga^yadai.} 

30. galoct ‘a kind of slirub’; “-lafo ‘kind of creeper’. [Of. Sk. gtt^act, 
guduci, guduci, gudUdka ‘CocctHaa cordifolius’.] 

31. gzila’baU; sugar, molasses’; sa-® ‘cake’; swelling, blight inniple. 
pustule’; gulikd ‘a little ball, globule’; sam-gupikd ‘cake’. [Sk. gudaJi ‘pill, 
sugar, molasses’ ; ‘pill’ ; gudikd ‘pill’ ; in this latter sense cp. gutiJca which 
has besides the meaning of ‘small pustule’, gu^aka- (f, gudikd) ‘prepared with 
treacle’. For Z-forms see guZaJ-, gulikd, guld.] 

32. golaka ‘a ball’. [Sk. godah ‘a fleshy navel’, gdlah ‘ball’, golakalix 
Pk. golaga-, golaya-,} 

33. cakkavdla- ‘circle, sphere’. [Sk. lex. cakravdtah ‘limit, boundary’, 
°-vddah ‘circle’, ^-vdJah ib. : Pk. cakkavdla-.} 


34. cmlikd ‘cricket’. [PED suggests the origin as a contamination of 
Sk. ciri avAjhiUikd, clrilli ; but cp. Sk. cintikakt ‘a land of bird ’ and the following 
variant forms for ‘cricket’: cmvdkah, cirikd, cirukd, cUikd, ctllikd, cillakali, 
ciUata^, cilludah: all these x)oint out to the onomatopoetic form ciri-, 
to PMIA *clnda{ka)-, *ctndikd, from a possibly earlier *cmtq{ka)- or *cmtikd.} 
36. cu4a ‘swelling, protuberance, Icnot, crest’; add,ha-^, kaiinu-^; cutaka. 
having a top-knot’, panca-°. [Sk. ctdah ‘protuberance’, cdlaka- ‘crested’.] 
36, cvianiJcd (from *<ySMmka- ‘lesser’). [PED suggests derivation 
from cvMa- ‘small’, but -I- indicates *ciidanika-< ^ciida-na-ka-, with *c?7d<t- 
< *cudda- (?) < ksudra-. Cf. Sk. cu^ayaii, cuddayati ‘becomes small’.] 

^ a hole’; foZo-® ‘a key-hole’. [< *c7wgpoda' from an earlier 

c iggoja- (.)<Sk. *cTiid-garia-', cp. Kohkapi Ugld ‘small pieces, parings’; 

Mara'athinparingofbamboousedasapitt’.] ^ S 



ON THE HISTORY OE I IN PSLI 


27 


38. jala ‘dull, stupid, slow’. ^ [Sk. jo^a-, Pk. jada-.] 

39. takhala ‘tuberose’; bilalU-°. [< *tah1ca-4a-, cf. Sk. tahrahva, 
takrabhakta ‘a 'kind of shrub’ whence *takra-ta-.] 

40. takii ‘strikes,, beats, flogs’; anw-®; sdm-ni-; abhitalita-; tala- 
‘beating, clapping of hands; key’; ialt ‘strike, blow’. [Sk. m4ayati ‘heaia, 
strikes’; iadah ‘blow’; iadakah ‘a kind of key’; tUdl ‘a kind of ornament’; 
tahi, ‘musical time’; tahkam, ‘lock’; Pk. ta4ei, tada-, taki, tala-.] 

41. daddalhati ‘blazes, shines brilliantly’, daddalhamdna (with . v.l. 
.daddhalamdna). [Geiger §186 gives daddallati, and §191 daddallamdna- < Sk. 
jajmlyate- as intensive forms. The readings are less than certain and may 
perhaps go back to a *daddhala- represented by the MSS. in either of these 
two varying forms. The uncertainty of the orthography may also be seen 
from a parallel difference where Geiger shows the I form in opposition to 
P!ED Z'form in bhindivala §38.5. If the reconstruction is accepted as daddha- 
lati, the form goes back to a *dagdha-ia ; '^dagdha-da-.] 

42. doJiala ‘craving, longing (of a pregnant woman)’; dohaldyaU ‘has 
cravings’; doMlini'a pregnant woman having longings’. [Sk, daurhrda-: 
■PMIA *doha4a-, later Sanskritized as dohada-i Pk. dohala-.] 

43. un-nala- (also v.l. unnala-) ‘insolent, proud, arrogant’. [Perh. 
< Sk. *un-nata-, ef. unndtayati ‘jumps up’ and Yk.unnasnia-t nnnalia- ‘lifted, 
elevated’. With these forms Sk. un-natd- and un-namati may be compared-! 

44. ncda- (and mla- also) ‘a species of reed’; naia-pin ‘a Icind of aquatic 
animal’. The reading nala is given secondary importance by PED which 
also records nalinl ‘a pond’; but LtJDBBS cites the following ^-forms in Pali; 
mla-, nail, Ncdinikd, Nalinl. [Sk. naddh (?.v. nald^) ‘reed’, ncdini ‘reed he'd’, 
nalaJb, nalinl ‘lotus flower’: Pk. mila-, ‘^Unl.] 

45. dnjana-ndli ‘coUyrium box’; nalikd ‘stalk, shaft, tube, pipe’, pa°’, 
wfiK ‘hollow stock, tube’, pa-°. [Sk. na^ ‘tubular stock’, ‘the box of a wheel’, 
na4ika ‘hollow stallc’ ; later Sk. ndla-, ndUka-, etc. : Pk. nddl, imld, nMll. See 
No. 44 above.] 

46. noZtifcem ‘cocoanut’, ‘cocoanut tree’; ‘belonging to the c. tree’. 
[Sk. lex. nOMkelah, ndnkdaT},-, Su^ruta ndrikeraji, ndlikeralt, Mbh. naHkerah, 
°-kelah: Pk. ndriera-, ‘’-eZa-, ndliara-, *-era-,] 

47. nlla ‘nest’i [Sk. nldd- (?,v. n^d-) mn. ‘nest’ : Pk. niida-, nl4a-.] 

48. pdli (also pali}^ ‘line, row, norm’. [< *padi-: Sk. paliJi f., but cf. 
pati-paM ‘order, arrangement, succession’ whence *pafi-: *pd4i-‘] 

49. vi-paliyaii ‘destroys’, ‘is destroyed’, passive from m-pafeti ‘rips 
open, destroys’: Sk. mpatayati ‘destroys’. [< *vi-padiyati froih a *pddeti, 
*pakfi.] 

50. pdsula-, phdsula, phdsvll ‘rib’. [Sk. pdthh ‘rib ’ whence *par&a-ia-, 
*pdsu-4a-i the aspiration may be due to analogy with other foms for which 
see Geiger §40.1 (p. 67 f.).] 


1 LOsbbs, o.e. 302. 


28 


B. C. liAW vobtjmt: 


51. pilaka 'a small boil, pustule, pimplo’; ‘a knob*. [Sk. pi4akah, 

uidaJba ‘pimple’.] . 

■ 52. pUeti ‘presses’, abU-^, abhinu^ o-®, nip-^, sow-" ; pihta-, ajjha- , 

abU-^, vp-’>, pa-\ papi-^ pari-\ sam-^; pila- with upa-^, up-^, sam-^', pati- 
pilana-, abhimpptlam; ptlaka-, pilana, pfla. [Sic. pida7jaft ‘prcascs, squeezes’, 
piko'pain, suffering’: Pk. pidai, pHiia-, pt^a', pilai, pthi,pilana-, jnld, etc.] 

53. pHraldsa- ‘sacrificial offering*. [Sk. puroda^dh.l 

54. peh, in yaka-pda- ‘ liver- (lump)’ ; pcld ‘ large basket ’ ; pdikd ‘ basket ; 
on the first form PED suggests connection with pinda- on the authority of 
PisoHEL §122 (p. 98), which is extremely doubtful. The form quoted bj' 
DeSlnamamala pedhala ‘round’ does not throw any light on the present form 
-pdfl" which shows -I- instead of the expected -Vh- if the connection suggested 
was based on facts. Eor the forms sec Sk. petah, petakah (from pitaka~, etc.). 
BSk. already shows the form peda by the side oipeta. 

55. 6a?ai;a ‘mare’; °-mukha ‘mare’s mouth’. [Sk. vddava (also written 
vddaha, bddavd, bddaba ) : Pk. vadavd, valava.] 

56. baliyakkha- ‘a species of bird’. [Etym. uncertain, but cp. Sk. 
vadabhd ‘a kind of bird’ and valdhakd- or halahakd-, haldkdh ‘kind of crane’.] 

57. bildra-, bildrikd, bildla-, bildlikd, bilali ‘ (he- or she-) cat’ [Sk. hidalaji, 
vidSlah, biralah, bildlali ; Pk. biddla-, bidalia, biddli, birala-, °Ud, ; bildda-, 
bildla-, ‘’K.] 

58. 6iK6i[ifco‘tittle>tattle’. [Cf. Sk. ‘swears’.] 

• 69. bTibbula (besides bvbbtda) ‘bubble’; ‘bubble; iris of the eye’. 
[Cf. Sk. budabuda ‘bubbling sound’ taid budbudah ‘bubble’; hudbuda- ‘a parti- 
cular disease of the eye’. Pk. budabudei ‘makes a bubbling sound*, Desi 
bvkmbuld f., bulabula- ‘bubble’.] 

60. kandalct-makula ‘ knob (?) of a kind of plant *. [For the first member 
of the compound see under kandala-. For the second member, cf. Sk. makutdm 
‘crests, Pk. mauda- ( < *mak'u4<i-)J\ 

61. (besides mala) ‘a sort of pavilion, hall’; mdlaka- ‘a stand (for 
alms bowl)’. [< *mdda~ from Dravidian.] 

61A. muto\% (w. 11, pvioli, rriiiioU)*^ kind of bag, sack*. [Cf. Sk. puta~ 
mn. ‘fold, pocket’, mMia- mn. ‘basket, bundle’, mvtaka-fmddaka- mn. ib.] 

82. rSP/a- ‘awful terrible’ com. = 6hima-. [Sk. rvrd- ‘hot, burning’; 
‘crushing, pountog’; possibly < rwdrd--. *rudda-, *rdda-.'\ 

63. Ugvla- ‘club, cudgel’. [Sk. lagudah ‘stick, staff, club’: Pk. laiida-, 
lailla-.l ' 


‘f fosters, cherishes’, nil-°; apa-° ‘draws away’; upa-ldlita- 

tondled, cherished’; Zoto.no ‘ dalliance ’;po-teKta.; totoZ^sports; plays, dailies’. 

ihk. la^h, ^yati ‘licks’ and Iddayati ‘cherishes, fosters’: Mali, IdJaijati: 
Pk. toto*, toZei, totonzq 


^“Nqand lutati) ‘stirs, shakes, agitates’, o-**; alulita- ‘unmoved’ 
sS ‘’co^ ’ ‘^«t™^bed’, ni-o; a4oleti, nU-^ ui-**; oZa.K ‘mud’ 

lodteuatv > 'i^i-lolana-. [Sk. lodaii ‘agitates’, ludati ‘covers’ 

Zodoyoh Bets in motion’ ; Pk. ZuZto-, lodot. Zotot.] 



ON THE HISTORY OF I IN t Tt.T 


29 


■ ,66. a-lamba(ra)- ‘a kind of drum’. [Sk. ar4dmbara^: Pk. d^mbwa-.] 

67. vi-laybhti ‘bums’. [< Sk. pi-dahyati: Pk. vidaojhwmam-, and Pa. 
^hati < Sk. ddhaii.] 

68. apalasin freedom from spite ’ whence *a>pdlasci- ‘ spite ’ construed by 
Tbenohner as a-pa~ldsa-. [< Sk. ras-, but of. BSk. praddsa- a-nd Sk. pra. 
dasyati ‘dries up, becomes dry’, whence *pra-dasa-, *padasa-; of. Pk. 

and paldsa-.] 

69. pari-Zoha- ‘burning, fever; distress, pain’. [Sk. pari-dakah, Pa. 
*pari-ddJM-: cf. vi-laliati above.] 

70. vala- ‘snake’. [PBD reads vala- which, if correct, shows derivation 
from OIA vyS^aih ‘snake, a beast of prey’, vydlaA : Pk. void'.] 

71. ‘submarine fire’. [Bh.va^va-mukham,vadavdgnib'', 
Pk. vadavdmuha-.} 

72. valabJiV'TooV . [Cf. Sk. vadaliM, valubhi ‘ridge of a roof’ : Pk. valaM.} 

73. mZflm‘mare’. [Cf. 6aZom above.] 

74. ‘snake, music’. [Cf. uoZa- above.] 

76. d-v^a- ‘turning round’ ; ovcZo ‘garland’; dvelin- ‘wearing garlands’. 
[Cf. Pk. dmela-ga-, ®-yfl-,ot;e^-( 2 /a)-,dwie??ta- ‘garlanded’ < Sk. ^5^[i‘chaplet 
tied on the crown of the head’.] 

76. veluriya- ‘lapis lazuli’. [Sk. vaidiirycm: Pk. vedujja-, veduria-, 
vcrulia-, veluria-, velulia-fi] 

77. ‘a kind of sweet-scented tree’. [Of. Sk. jfaJdJu ‘a kind 

of fragrant substance’.] 

78. safrdyaiana- ‘the six organs of sense’. [Sk. md-dyaUmam.\ 

79. sdlam- ‘a kip,d of salad dish’. [Sk. §ddavaT}, ‘confectionery, sweet- 
meats ’.] 

80. Ba7Mda-civara-‘ coarse cloth’. [Gi.De§isdhuli,^lidi\),',<.Sk..*sddhu- 

tal^ (?).] 

81. s?kate(kd) ‘Ceylonese’. [<*5wh7ia-^-. Sk. simhaUi-'. Fh..si/irhluila-, 
slhala-.^] 

82. soZdsd ‘sixteen’; °-kkhatiim, “-ma. [Sk. sodaidi Pk. sola^a, solaha.\ 

83. ‘is vexed, grieves, vexes, scorns, disclaims’, ati-°\ Mlita- ‘des- 
pised’; hilana-, °-nd ‘disdain, contempt’; o-Mland 'scom’. [Sk. Mdati, hzda- 
‘instigator’, htdUd- ‘angry’; hedate ‘makes angry’, held ‘disrespect’: Pk. 
hllal.l 

II. OIA >Pi. -[k- 

1. dl1ta[k(i)~ ‘a kind of measure’. [Sk. ddJuika- mn. : Pk. ddJiaga-, 
ddhaya-.l 

1 o.c. compares Pa. Anathapixfdika- or “^irfdada- ■with BSk. Andthapedika, equating 

pe^i- with pividi: ■ On the etymology of see Liden, AUindiseh. undverg.Sprachgeeehiete, 

pp. 87-8; on an improbable etymology see Thiemb, ZDMG 93. Both pedM-, pe^SJa- 
may bo ultimately connected with plthdn ‘spleen’ tlirough the base pith- (pMate) ^ving us 
*pliz-da; *pKs.dha; the first giving us the prototype for p^a- of Pali meaning ‘spleen’ and the 
second pcdAo-'of Pk. If this etymology is accepted, we have in yaka-pela- a double compound 
each member of which indicates the same idea. 

s LfiDEBS, Fest. E. Kuhn, p. 307. ® t6., 304. 


30 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


2. alhikor, °-iya- ‘rich, happy, fortunate ’ ; andlhi-ka- ya- ‘poor, miserable, 
destitute’. [Sk. ‘opulent, wealthy’: Pk. 

'•3. nrulliava- ‘large, bulky, immense, great, big, strong’; v.l. is ub-bUlha- 

q.v. 

4. galka- ‘strong, tight, close, thick’, acc-o-°, ojjb-o-^, ati- , a- , 
pariy- 0 '° ; ni-galUha- ‘ immersed [Sk. gadlia - : Pk. gadhu-.'l 

5. giiLlui- ‘hidden, secret ’, ni-“. [Sk. gHihd- (p,v. gUlhd-) : Pk. gndlia-.] 

6. dalha- ‘firm, strong, solid, steady, fast’; dalhl f. [Sk. drdha-, P-v. 
drlhd - : Pk. dadlui-, didba-.} 

7. dvt^Jiaka- ‘doubt’, advelhaka- ‘certain, without doubt’. [Sk. *dvaiz' 
dhdka-.^] 

8. pilkaka- (v.l. rnilhaka-) ‘cess-pool’, ‘dung-beetle’. [PED corrects the 
reading to mllltaka- < Sk. mldhdm, mtZftdm ‘excrement’ whence midhaka. For 
the variant pilhaka- is to be explained by the imrallelism of mihati ‘voids 
mine’: par§ate ‘becomes wet’, pr$ai n. *a drop of water’, etc.] 

9. balha- ‘strong’, *‘-tara, **-gildna-\ aii°, ttb-°, pa°, paii°\ bdlhika- 
‘prosperous’, 8u-°. [Sk. badhd-: Pk. badha-, ba}ia~.] 

10. abbvlJiati ‘pulls out, draws out’, abbv.\hana ‘pulling out, extracting*; 
cf. abbiilha- below. 

11. ab-bulha- ‘drawn out’, parib-^^ smn-iipab-** \ ab-bulhiia- ‘puUcd out, 

removed’; ub-bulkamnt- ‘large, bulky, etc.’. [Cf. Pk. uvviJudha-, uvvidha-, 
the form < *vrzdha- from the base vfh-.^] 

12. milha- ‘excrement’ ; °-kilpa-, ®-M ‘cess-pool’. [Sk. Tmilidm, mtlhdm. 
Cf. pilhaka above.] 

13. ‘erring, straying, confosed, infatuated’; a-°-vinaya-’, pa-^‘, 
sam-°, sam-pa-^. [Sk. mudhd-: Pk. mddha-.'] 

14. vi-yaXha- (read as vi-y-viha-) ‘massed, heaped, thick, dense’; sam-° 
‘collected, composed, gathered’. [Sk. ndJia-."] 

15. rulha- ‘grown’, ajjh-d°, abhi-^, d-°, upa-°, pa-°, ui-**, samupa-°, 
sath’-”, samvi-°’, rulhi ‘ascent, growth’, avi-°. [Sk. rudhd-.] 

16. Ulhd ‘grace, ease, charm, adroitness’. [Sk. lidha- ‘licked’ and llld.] 

17. pa-vdlha- ‘carried away, turned away, distracted, dismissed’ with 
v.l. pdbbdlha- q.v. 

18. iMlha- ‘carried away’ ; sam-'*. [Cf. ulha- (No. 14 above).] 

19. dsdlhd, ‘’-5‘Npr. of a month’. [Sk. d§ddhd*& lunar mansion’, dsddhi 
‘the day of full moon in the month so named’.] 

20. otssclAefi; cf. next. 

21. iwsolkilfcg) ‘exertion, belonging to exertion’. [Sk. eodiia-.] 

III. OIA -»i->Pa. 

1. »-da- ‘blameless, faultless.’, aneld- ib., an^aka- ib. [Cf. Sk. inas 
‘sin, offence, fault, crime’ ; Gbigbb §43 reads ela, anelaka- here.] 

* * dviz . dha } Waokebnaoei., Ai . Or . IH, p. 698. 

nsos 8.832-4, Waokebitaoki., Altindisohe und Mittelindisohe MiszeUen. 



ON THE HISTORY OF I IN P5LI 


31 


2. TcTiila- hard skin, callosity’. [v.l. is kina-, corresponding to Sk. 
kinah'‘ com, scar, cicatrix, callosity’.] 

■ 3 . muldla- ‘ stalk of a lotus ’, bhisa -° ; mulali ib., ^-puppha- ‘ lotus’ ; mulalika 
ib. [Sk. mpialam'.'Pk. munala-.] 

4. api-landha- adorned wth’, apilandhana- ‘that which is tied on’, 
apilahati, ^-landhaii fastens on’, piTay/iafi ‘fastens on, puts on, covers, adorns’. 
[Geiger §43 gives only tho Z-forms. Sk. nahyaii.] 

5. vclv- bamboo , vcluka- ‘a kind of tree’, vcpuva- ‘made of bamboos’. 
[Sk. vin-Ah, vinvh: Pk. venu-, velu-.] 

IV. MiscEiJiANEotrs Group 

In this group we have to consider a number of examples where Pali Z 
seoms to correspond to OIA Z, r or to certain nexi, and whose exact et 3 miologies 
cannot be reconstructed on the present evidence. On further investigation it 
may be possible to demonstrate that even these vocables show the existence 
of a pre-Pali -d- corresponding to Pali -Z-. 

1. ilpaZaZa'Npr. of anagaraja’ CPD. [Cf. idpaZaZoA'Npr. of a raksasa’ 
in Sk. Possibly *a-patdla- ‘not falling’: %-po^oZa-.] 

2. aladvarakd- at J.v. 81, 82 (v. 81 has alaraha) which PED emends to 
advaraka ‘doorless’; possibly Pk. opa- for a- (priv.). 

3. aldna- ‘peg, post, etc. to which an elephant is tied’ with v.l. dl&na-. 
[Sk. dldnam : Pk. dpdla-, dldna-. The Z-reading is found at DhA where all the 
MSS. agree. Op. Sk. d-dyati ‘binds’, o-ianaTO‘ fettering’. The existence of 
d- and Z-forms in OIA, though at different stages, indicates the intermediate 
si,a^oM-*ddna- with a possible cerebralization of the base da-.] 

4. didrika-, °-riya- ‘cook’, the comm, giving the synonyms bhattakdraka- 
and supika-. [Of. JMbh: drdlikah ‘cook’.] 

5. dlinda- ‘terrace or verandah before the house door’ with v.l. dlinda. 
[Sk. alindah, dlindah.} 

C. ?fZ«n7ca- ‘ladle, ’spoon’. [Geiger §17.2a and §42.3 connects this with 
Sk. ndankdh'pail, bucket’: Pk. v^nka-, with a>winPali.] 

7. eldlvlca (or ddluka) ‘a kind of cucumber’. [Of. Sk. elvdlukain‘s, kind 
of fragrant substance’.] 

8. lealdya- (and kaldpa-) ‘ a kind of pea ’. [Sk. kaldyah, but cf. ka^dyanam 
‘Andropogon Muricatus’.] 

9. kaliiigara- (and kalingara-) ‘log, piece of wood, plank’. [Cf. Sk. 
kalingab ‘kinds of trees: Caesalpina BonduceUa, Wrightia antidysenteria, 
Acassia Sirissa, Ficus infectoria’ and ka4(imkarah, ka^iihgaraTi ‘straw’.] 

• 10. kalifa- ‘top sprout of a plant’; varhsa-^; vdiigidma. [Of. Sk. kafira- 
mn. ‘iliac region’, ‘cave, indentation’; < Sk. karira- mn. ‘shoot of a’bamboo’. 
Compare also kalikd ‘the bottom or peg of the Indian lute (made of a cane)’.] 

11. Mlopi ‘vessel, basin, pot’, ‘basket, crate’; °-mukJia-, °-hattha- and 
khalopl ‘pot’. The variants are kJialopi, kalopH. [Cf. Sk. kdiorah, katord 
‘a kittd of cup’, katdha{ka) ‘pan, pot’, kaiaccMkab, ‘a kind of spoon, ladle’. 



32 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


kadatram ‘a kind of vessel’, kald^ah ‘pitcher’, aU of which indicate a possible 
*kata-, *kada', as the basis for these forms.] 

12. kakola- ‘raven’; v.l. kakoU-. [Sk. kdkol^h ‘raven’ but in 

the sense of ‘snake’ comp, karkofa^.} 

13. kukkula- ‘embers, hot ashes’, °-vas8a- ‘shower of embers’. [Cf. 
Sk. kukula- mn. ‘conflagration made of chaff’.] 

14. fceZosa- ‘Npr. of a mountain’. [< Sk. kailMsali.} 

16. pari-kelana ‘adornment’; variants are ^hpana, -keldsand, pati-keJma. 
[If not connected with the base krld-. Pa. k\l-, comp. Sk. ketanam ‘ensign, 
flag’.] 

16. kdi- ‘play, sport, attachment, lust’: Sk. kelif, goes back to Sk. 
krld-, Pa. kll-, already noted under I. 24 above. 

17. kolaimba- (variant kdUmba-) ‘pitcher’; cf. kalopl above. [Cf. Sk.. 
kolambakali ‘the body of a lute’.) 

18. koldpa- (and koldpa-) ‘dry, sapless’, ‘hollow tree’. [Cf. kro^- 
‘ hollow’.] 

19. koUkdinplK-” ‘having boils of the size of a jujube’. [Cf. Sk. kolam, 
koU^] but cf. kro4d-.'\ 

20. feouiZora- ‘sort of ebony’. [Sk.Pk. fcowidam-,] 

21. khljana- ‘scorn’, khlleti ‘derides’. , [Perhaps < fcsved-.] 

22. paccaggala- in °-e attkdsi ‘struck in his gullet ’. [< pralyakgala- 

< Sk, gala- ‘throat’.] 

23. cdldslti (besides cvMdaUi) ‘eighty-four’. [Cf. JM ciddsn.'] 

24. dalidda- ‘poor’, ‘poverty’ ; Mliddiya- ib. ; as LOdebs has pointed 
out these J-forms are scribal errors for the correct dalidda-^ ’[Sk. ddridra-: 
Pk. daridda-, dalidda-.l 

26. pacchdliyam khipaii ‘throws into the lap (?)’. [Cf. pak§dh ‘flank’: 
*pak8dU-, *pak8d4i--J 

26. pavdla (besides pavdla-) ‘coral, shoot, sprout’; kdlavalU-° ; pdvdla- 
‘hsir’, °-nipphotand ‘pulling out one’s ham’. [BSk. pravddaji. Epic Sk. 
pmwoZah: Pk. powaZa.] 

27. pulava- ‘worm, maggot’; °-ka- ib. [Cf. Sk. pulakah ‘kind of 
vermin ’ : Pk. pulaa-.] 

28. pulina- (besides puliwi-) ‘sandy bank or mound in the middle of a 
river ; a grain of sand’. [Sk. pulina- mn.] 

29. malorikd ‘a stand or tripod for a bowl, formed of sticks’. [PED 
suggests the emendation mSlflka for mallaka. For the form cf. Sk. marolikd 
‘a sea monster’ and for meaning mallakal^ ‘lamp-stand’.] 

.30. upa-ldseti ‘sounds forth’, uppa-ldseti ib. for which it is a variant. 
[< Sk. upa-ramyati ‘yells, roars’.] 

31. ^ valina- for which the comm, reads valina-, synonymous with dhulor. 
[Sk. valina- ‘shrivelled, wrinkled, flaccid.’] 

32. viraZo (besides etraZa-) ‘sparse, rare.’: viralita- ih. [Sk.wm-te-: Pk. 
virai is destroyed’ as a dhatvadeia for vi-liyate, viral ‘shatters, splits’ (as dhv. 
for hhanj.) or ‘becomes perplexed’ (as dhv. for gup-): M. vir-yZ ‘to melt’ 


ON THE HISTORY OR I IN PTt.t 


33 


wlience we can posit a *mra- seen in all these forms. Pa. shows the presence 

of -4- so that both Pa. and Sk. forms can be traced to a vira-4a- (from an 
earlier *mrata- ?).] 

33. vellalin- ‘flashing (of swords)’. [Cf. Sk. vdla- ‘shaking’.] 

34. 6alika ‘a bird; the maina’, spelt sdliy& at J. vi. 425; the other spellings 
QiVQ sSlilidf saliyd, etc. [Cf. Sk. idtikd, sdriJcd, ddrih f., ^an^7i‘the maina bird, 
Graoula Eeligiosa or Tardus Salica’.] 

It will thus be seen from a survey of the principal vocables of Pali con- 
taming the lingual I that this I must go back to an earlier 4> even of this last 
category and the few exceptional changes of -w- > -1-, a little consideration 
shows that there is still a possibility of discovering or reconstructing a form 
contaimng the -d~ in the primitive hllA stage. The other interesting fact 
which emerges from the preceding analysis is the apparent correspondence 
between Pali I and Sanskrit rorl in the majority of cases, where the reconstruc- 
tion shows either the. presence or absence of the -d-. 

Our present Imowledge of MIA linguistics is not sufficient to show us all 
the stages of this wide change over the whole length of the country and to 
distinguish clearly the inherited elements from the elements loaned from 
cognate groups. Fortunately as far as Pali is concerned, the presence of I 
where the orthography is not uncertain, or where Pali has not palicized i the 
vocables borrowed from other MIA languages, definitely indicates a derivation 
- from an earlier ?. While one cotdd understand the correspondence existing 
between d and I (in such periods and dialects where the orthography shows 
but one 1) the correspondence existing between d and 1 or r makes it at least 
probable that the earlier form must have contained an original d or a d cere- 
bralized by the presence of certain cerebralizing phonemes. On the whole 
it appears to be almost certain that in cases where Pali shows a 1 in opposition 
to Prakrit d, an earlier 4 has to be assumed for both forms, and the Pali 
vocable has to be considered to be a loan from some MIA dialect which has 
not preserved the I if the graphy is not at fatdt. Similarly the Sanskrit 
vocables showing a Z to Pk. d come under the same category. 

With reference to the correspondence postulated by Pisohel® between 
I and r (as shtfwn by Sk. vaidufya- and Pk. vemlia) LUdebs has correctly 
remarked that it is not so much a change from d to r as from I to r.® The 
other examples for this correspondence quoted by LUdebs are Aldrai Arddfi 
and the Sanskrit birdla-: Pa. bildra-. LCdebs has rightly suspected the 
influence of New Indo-Aryan dialects on the multiplicity of forms indicated by 
the vocables for ‘cat’ in the variants of birdla- etc. 

In bis excellent paper on Middle Indian -4- and -dd-^ Turner has fully 
considered the question of New Indian treatment of these phonemes and his 
findings are as follows: 

Group I consists of NIA languages which obliterate the distinction between 
MLA -d- and -44-. In the case of Kumaoni, Central and West Himalayan 


* LO&ebs, Antidoron. 
3 LOdbbs, 0 . 0 ., 307. 


s Qr. Pr. Spr., §241. 

* Festgabe Jacobi, 34r-4o. 


34 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


dialects and Hindi both are reduced to -r-. Gujarati and MaratM reduce them 
to -d-t while Rajasthani dialects and Oriya with its dialects have either d or r 
according to the particular dialect concerned for both -d and -d^-. Bengali 
and Assamese belong to the group of -r- dialects observed above. Gypsy 
reduce both to -r-. 

Group II consist of dialects where the distinction between -d- and -dd- 
is maintained. They are : 


1 . 

2 . 

3 . 

4 . 
6 . 
6 . 

7 . 

8 . 
9 . 

10 . 

11 . 


§i^a: -4- is lost, -dd- > -r-. 

Kazmin : -d- > -r- (or r)-, -dd- > -d-. 

West Himalayan: -d- > -r-, -d^- > -44' or -d-. 

Lahndi: -d- > -r-, -dd- > -dd- (and -d- after long vowels). 
Panjabi: ib. 

Sindhi: -d- > -r-, -dd- > -4-. 

Nepali: -d- > -r-, -dd- > -r-. 

West Hindi "I j . „ 

t -4- > -r-, -44- > -r-‘ 


East Hindi J 

Bihari: -d- > -r-, -dd- > -r-. 

Singhalese: -d- > -dd- > -Z. 

If we observe the nature of the changes which have affected -d- and -44- 
we notice the following correspondences: 

1. - 2 cro-: -f-. 2. -r- or -r- : (or -44-)- 

3 . -r-: -f-. 4 , -4-'. 


These may now be grouped together in a linguistic series, showing the-possible 
continuous evolution of the change as follows: complete loss of occlusion: 
r : r : d : dd on the one hand, and to Z : d on the other. The complete loss 
of occlusion is seen, however, in only one dialect, and if it is excepted, we have 
the following series, in the increasing order of phonetic effort required to 
pronoTmee these phonemes: r : r or Z : ^ : dd. This shows that in dialects 
of MIA which possess both Z and r, the Z-forms should be phonetically speaking 
earlier than the r-forms. The only question which requires further investi- 
gation is of Z and r forms : whether Z-forms are. derived from r-fonns or directly 
from Z-forms. It is not, however, the object of the present paper to deal 
with this question. 


MADHAVA, son of 6BI VENKATARYA, and SAYAhlACARYA 
By Dr. Lakshman Sabup, M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon) 

The only hitherto available commentary on the whole of the Rgveda 
is the commentary of SayanS,carya, who mentions several predecessors by 
name, e.g. Udgitha, Madhavabhatta, etc. But the commentaries of Sclyana’s 
predecessors were lost. The recent discovery of the work of SayaAa’s 
predecessors, Ddgitha, Skandasvamin. and Madhavabhatta is therefore' an 
important event in the history of Vedic exegesis. The 'hitherto discovered 
commentanes of TJdgxtha and Skandasvamin are on a part of the Rgveda only 



35 


MSDHAVA, son of SbI VEiteATAR'Y’A, AND SSYANSOSEYA 


But the commentary of Madhavabhatta, whom I have identified with Madhava, 
son of 6ri Venlcatarya, is on tho whole of the l^gveda. I am preparing a critical 
edition of this Madhava’s commentary on the il^gveda. Three volumes, 
bringing the commentary up to the 'end of the fourth mandala of the !Rgveda, 
are already published by Messrs. Motilal Banarsidas of Lahore. The rest is 
in the press and is expected to cover six or seven volumes. The discovery 
and publication of a pre-Sayana commentary on the whole of the Bgveda 
^vill therefore be welcome by Vedic scholars, as it will enable us to make a 
comparative study of Sayana’s commentary with that of Vefikata Madhava 
and to see to what extent the former is indebted to the latter. 

There is a belief among European scholars that Sayana’s commentary 
is his own individual interpretation and that he did not inherit any unbroken, 
uniform tradition of Vedic interpretation. There was some plausibility to 
support this view as long as the work of Sayana’s predecessors had not been 
discovered. This view becomes untenable after the discovery of the work of 
Sayana’s predecessors. 

In this short paper, I wish to adduce evidence to show that Sayana’s 
commentary is not his own individual interpretation and that he did inherit 
a tradition of- Vedic interpretation. A comparison of Sayana’s commentary 
with that of Venlmta Madhava cannot but lead one to this conclusion. I have 
put both commentaries side by side on the same l^tgvedic stanzas and scholars 
will be able to see for themselves that Sayana’s interpretation is traditional 
and not individualistic. 

In explaining BV. X. 31. 11, both Sayana and Venkata Madhava 
paraphrase, atra by ittliam. 

In commenting bn BV. IX. 6. 3, VM. explains rayi as data and S. as 
abhVstasya data. In most other passages of the BV., rayi is generally 
explained as ‘wealth’. 

In BV. X. 11. 8, both explain atra as taddnlm. 

InBV. X. 149. 1, both use the term yamana-sadlianaih to explain yantraih. 

In the follovdng cases, the explanation is almost identical. VM. does not 
repeat the words of the original Vedic stanza. I have put the original Vedic 
words within brackets in the commentary of Sayana in order to facilitate 
comparison of interpretation. 


%. TTT. 

^ fqenC! 

cr«rn?fHs 

STTfiPIT si<Tcjf4crT: 


l€.8!\s^. 

t ^ 

[w [^] 

ST ^<i<rscn 

'wferasaif 0?rt] fM" 



36 


B. O. LAW VOLUMK 




»n. 


1 ^nw^^nf^s I 
5m^S I ^n=Rf^! I 

I ^WTfteJT! I ^- 
I ^^lApetlT* I I 

’m I ^jqnT I ^fxnTm! I 

^RNricig^! I 


[sf^: ] 5 t^ 5 I [5!l®f^- 

5tre-*] ^^w^siTf^Tmj I [wr:] % 
^JTqmns [^rsf^nni!] ^sfipnii^crT! [^- 
fw:] [Widaj'<i!] 

^TOTfteTT: [^ig^:] ^3^311! [^STSTCH] 
[^] [^twfgi^R!] 
53r$mJIW-$mDlI^di: 

gBU T Vf^c ns [w- 

] f^3’5l’?T** I 


? o|4.8|‘J[. 


t. ?TT. 

qjrgTJli: I 

I JEITTOT ^ «Erra^: ^ff^- 
I liW ’ZJTT! I 3 Wq^<rfT : | 

^ I I I 

^nmr: 1 

I 1 W I I 

1 ^^d^nu f; I 


^TT^nii. 

[H^nufj] ^wrr ??RT?n: [’ar^r] 
^nft^ [^raicT] [^] 
^f^5raai5^ [ 'gf^ ] [«wp§^] 

^ [siW*] 

*««iwiT jyt [left^s] JTO^nft^s 
[^^;] [sq^] 

[ r*i«4pTi ] fsTJnpnrJSfi [ y»«?g ] 

[ft35^] ?lTWfi7: ^fecl ^ ISPI 

C^‘] 


%. TTT. 


^0)4.818 


^'***«*^ I I TT ^^IU I 

1 -5?^ 1 I 

1 ^irisT 1 ^ I 

1 f «T: 1 ^ J 

I I I ^- 

f? ^ft?T 

1 


[^[^f%] ^fi4 
^"htsfr 5irw^ 

^ [^^s3 5Er^ 



mSdhava, son ok ^rI veS'satXbya, and sayanScSeya 


37 




TTT. 


^CWtlSJpfl ^ ^fjrar Tcf^cPC 
^1*1 cl H^s I 




iTT. 

^ 0* A A 

I ^(cjRt! I 

^cRsnsi I I ^ismn%sr 

I I I ^RTir- 

TfNrf I ^1 I wit g^Eiirr- 

31^ sitct: I ^ irai^s — ^ TOni 

^rmft I I i 

I ^TT^ sra^j I 


^rrwr. 

55?7Wfr ^TJTcrT! 

MStfJpfl I ^ «nPaTiTq(«(c^ 'Sra 

•fiCtfJl I 

^PTor. 

?iw ir^ I [^] 

^ [f ] [^] 

ei^ 1581^ ^ 

^5*iT fens ^ 3T-cjTr«nr«f 

arsTniT^sr [^^0 
[t5fT%] ^iF?nT% [«W!] T^ts^R?ir- 
^8 [^] l^'l 

5ro5ri3I^ 'Srtst* t i(«i('sjsi^8 } 

t TOH c# r<iy-*air« I ffec^8 =s^ 
^ [^q?E!^] wm ^nir- 

A'W'frfla^prnr srsTi^ i 


%. m. ^nw. 

^ I TTpSlSjby 

I ?7g5[T^ I I nr’f I [ ^ ] fel 

wnrflr *5T^TT^ W^j 5*^ SRfflW JW^fcl 

TJSIt; V( fhw Hat’fNf 51^ » W^t* ^PIT* "St fN^ H^N^- 


^T^nnwi 

%. m. 

%. TIT. 


TIT^. 

%?nTg^D[PER8gfN8 sirofar^ l 

tit™. 

fF5^^*D^ ^ fsr^WsftsftRpT- 
I 


%. TIT. Tinuir. 

^IjgjcP I ? »jVi Tl *.T Igra 5^*IT( I I I ^- 

91^ ^HTtPOT*^ I 



THE NYAYA-VAI6ES1KA CONCEVTION OF ^MIND 

* 

Db. SADA^'A^•DA BlIADmU, M.A,, PjI.1). 


1. The mind as a distincA sense-organ 

In tho Hyaya-VaiSesaja Bystem, as in other orthodox systems of Indian 
Philosophy, the mind {manas or antahicarana) has hcon recognized as a distinct 
substance. It is only tho Buddhist and Jaina schools which do not admit 
tho independent existence of tho mind apart from the self or consciousness. 
There is unifoi'mity of tradition among tho philosophci's of most of tho orthodox 
schools that the mind is on intcnial sense-organ (antarindriya) which stands 
apart from tho five woll-lcnown external organs of scnsc.^ Tho problem 
of the existence of tho mind is, therefore, just on a par with that of tho sense- 


organs. 

Tho self is ubiquitous and eternal; it is always connected with cvcrjdhing 
that maj' become an object of Imowledge. Theoretically, therefore, the 
condition of the knowledge of every possible object is present for the self at 
every moment of its existence. But it is a matter of common experience that 
one does not have all possible cognitions at the same time; these cognitions 
are found to arise only in succession. The self’s incompetence to cognize 
all possible objects simultaneously in spite of contact ndth them makes the 
presupposition of other conditions of such cognition a matter of logical 
necessity. Apart from the problem ■whether tho self is a conscious principle 
ha-ving consciousness for its very essence and being, or is a substratum or 
condition of consciousness, the existence of tho self is not tho sufiicient condition 
of cognition. The existence and activity of the sense-organs arc to be iiositod 
as further conditions. Tho sense-organs may be looked upon as so many 
limitations or fetters obstructing tho free actmty of the self in regard to the 
external reality. The self, situated as it is, is therefore dependent upon the 
good offices of the sense-organs for the realization of its activity in the shape 
of cognition, feeling or conation. It is only those objects which come through 
the channel of the sense-orgatis that can be perceived by tho self. But, for 
the emergence of tlie psychical phenomena the existence of tho self and the 
external sense-organs are not sufficient conditions. This is proved by the 
fact that though all the external sense-organs may be on tho alert and the 
objective conditions of perception may be present in full, and the connection 
of the self both with the sense-organs and with the objects concerned is an 
undisputed fact, the cQgmtion that takes place is related to a particular pbject 
and a pairticular sense-organ. It is 'often found that when a man sees a thing 
which interests him, he does not perceive a soimd or any other perceptible 
object. Although it may be contended, as it has actually been done by the 


The Advaita-Vedanta. however, regards manas not as an independent sense-organ hut 
oriy as a particular aspect of antap-arapa (mind); m^nas, according to it, is the mind in a state 
of mdecision (samiaya). But this is a view with which other orthodox philosophers do 



THE N\*AYA-VAI5e 9IKA CONCBPTIOK or MIND 


39 


Miniamsakas, that a person can have simultaneous cognitions of various 
sense-data, such as colour, taste, etc., if is still a problem why all possible 
perceivable objects arc not perceived. Moreover, it happens not infrequently 
that when a person is preoccupied with the perception or thought of a particular 
thing, many things escape his obsor\'ation. What is it that makes such pre- 
occupation and the consequent failure of cognition of perceivable data possible? 
It is certainly neither the self, nor the senses severally or jointly, nor even 
any defection on the part of the latter, that can account for this usual though 
epistemologically unexpected phenomenon. Certainly, then, the offices of some 
other organ have got to be requisitioned for the realization of a particular 
cognition. If some additional condition is postulated to complete the appa- 
ratus of cognition, and if the function of this condition be a contingent fact, 
the non-emergence of simultaneous cognitions will find its explanation. This 
additional condition is called the mind.^ Thus if we suppose that a sense- 
organ can successfully produce a cognition when it is associated with the 
mind and not when this association is absent, we can explain why the other 
organs, though they arc competent and activply employed upon their relevant 
objects, do not succeed in producing the cognitions of the latter. The point 
at issue is this that a sense-organ can produce its relevant cognition only if 
it is in relation with the mind, and it follows that the mind cannot be in relation 
with all the sense-organs at the same time. The intermittent character of the 
mind’s actmty is thus easily deduced from the fact that we do not have more . 
than one sense-perception at any particular moment. 

It is apparent from what has been stated that the mind serves as a sort 
of post-office between the sense-organs on the one hand and the self on the 
other. It works, moreover, as a regulator of the sense-organs in their activity. 
The proof of the mind in this regard is more or less of a negative character, 
which is furnished by a reductio ad ahsurdum. But there is positive evidence 
also. Memory is a purely psychical fact which cannot be accounted for by 
tho activity of any external sense-organ, as the former emerges only on the 
cessation of tho latter. It may be asked: How does the mind come in so far 
as tho emergence of memory is concerned ? .The answer is that memory being 
a positive effect and a quality of the self at that, it must be effectuated by a 
combination of tlirce causes, uiz., the material, the non-material and the 
accessory. The self is tho material cause '{samavdyikarana)’, the latent 
impression {samskdra) and its stimulation by a stimulus constitute the accessory 
cause (nimittakdrana). But what is the non-material cause {asamavdyi- 
hdrdna) ? It must only be the conjunction of the self with some other substance. 
As tho bearing of the external sense-organs upon memory has been ruled 
out, an additional substance has got to be posited for this purpose, and this is 
the mind.2 But though tins argument proves the necessity of the mind as a 
separate entity, its independence of the external sense-organ is not established 

1 Vftifio 9 ikasutrft, HI. ii. 1; Nyayftbhosya ond Nyayavarttika imder sutra I. i. 16. 

2 Nyuyakandali (Vizianagram Sanskrit Sorios),p. 00; Eiranavali (Benares Sanskrit Series), 
p. 163. 


40 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


beyond doubt. Memory is but a reproduction of senso-exporienco, and though 
the external sense-organ may have ceased to function when momoiy is pro- 
duced, its bearing upon the latter can by no means be denied. The mind, 
it is true, is a necessary condition of memory, but it is not proved to bo ab.so- 
lutely independent of the sense-organ, inasmuch as it comes into play only 
in the wahe of a sense-organ. Thus the mind seems to bo a sort of appendix 
to the external organ. In point of reality, however, the mind is an 
independent, organ and has got an independent scope and function of its own, 
which cannot be usurped by any other sense-organ. It is the internal organ 
{antcihlcarana ) ; and even when it acts in association with an external organ, 
it functions not as an appendix but rather as a regulative principle. The 
independence of the mind qua an organ is attested by the direct perception 
of such psychical phenomena as cognition, pleasure, pain, etc. These purely 
subjective experiences being perceptual in character pmsuppose the activity 
of an organ, just like the perceptual cognition of external objects. Whatever is 
perceptual is .conditioned by an organ. The psychical experiences noted 
above are perceptual in character. Therefore they are conditioned by an 
organ. As external organs can obviously have no jurisdiction over these 
internal experiences, we have got to posit an internal organ for their reali- 
zation. This is nothing but the mind.^ 

A problem has been raised to the effect that though the mind may have 
been proved to be an internal organ, it does not necessarily follow that it is 
anything different from an external organ in its structure and constitution. 
.Each external organ, in the Nyaya*Vai6esika view, is a subtle material product ; 
it is composed of the physical element {bhuta) whose specific quality {vi^esa- 
quna) it apprehends. The smelling organ, for instance, cognizing odour alone 
which is the specific quality of earth, must be earthy in its constitution; and 
similarly for the other organs. Wliat, then, is the harm if the mind also is 
conceived to be a form of matter, say a special type of earthy substance? 
That it is cognizant of internal psychical phenomena is no proof of its being 
other than earthy. It may well be composed of earth, just like the organ of 
smell. Nor can it be contended that the mind being devoid of a tactile attri- 
bute is not of the nature of earth. The absence of tactility in the mind is an 
unproved assumption. One cannot argue that being improductive of a sub- 
stance {dravydnarambhaka) it must be accounted as devoid of tactility, because 
• this argument is a case of plain non sequitur. What can be the possible product 
of the mind ? A material product must be either a cognizable object [visaya] 
or a physical organism {iarira) or a seiue-organ \indriya). But none of these 
can be said to be the product of the mind, as they are all composites produced 
from their own constitutive causes, viz., atoms. Nor can the mind be sup- 
posed to be productive of any other special sense-organ. The recognized 
sense-organs have got their distinctive causes, and the mind as the sipeth 
OTgan being competent to cognize internal phenomena, there is absolutelv 

1 03 (VizianagramSanBkfit Series), p. 90; Kiranavali (BonareB Sorion), 



THE HYAYA-VAriE^lKA CONCEPTION OF MINX) 


41 


no necessity for another extra organ that may be supposed to be produced 
by the mind. If an additional organ were produced, it would have no scope 
and distinctive function of its own. Thus the mind’s failure to produce any 
substance is due to the absence of any necessity for the possible results, and so 
this cannot be made the ground for inferring the unearthy constitution of the 
mind. That the mind is an earthy substance is supported by the further 
consideration that it cognizes also smell, the specific object of the earthly 
organ. If in spite of its functional community with the organ of smell it is 
regarded as unearthy, the smelling organ may also be regarded as having an 
unearthy constitution. The argument that the mind caimot be distinguished 
from the organ of smell is only by way of illustration. It may be proved by 
employing similar lines of argument that the mind does not differ firom other 
organs also. The upshot of the contention is that though the mind be an 
additional organ, it need not be structurally and constitutionally different 
from any one of the four material substances. An atom of earth or water 
or light or air can without any logical incongruity be credited with the function 
of the mind. -By the same logic it may be shown that the mind cannot be 
distinguished &om aMia too. 

The Vai^esiha argues that the argument is suicidal in its results. The 
respective functions of the different sense-organs must be regarded as mutually 
exclusive. The denial of this rule will render the postulation of different 
organs superfluous. Thus the earthly organ must be restricted to the cognition 
of smell. If it were competent to cognize taste also, there would be no necessity 
for positing the gustatory organ over and above the organ of smell. In 
short, one organ would do the duty of all the organs taken together. But 
this is an impossibility, as the loss of the organ of smell does not entail incom- 
petency for the perception of taste. So th^ postulation of different sense-organs 
is an epistemological necessity. Though the mind is competent to perceive 
smell or taste or colour or touch, it cannot be subsumed under any one of the 
recognized sense-organs. The reason for differentiating the mind from other 
organs lies in .the fact that the different sense-organs have got their provinces 
sharply demarcated, one from the other. The organ of smell, for instance, 
is competent to perceive smell alone in the midst of an assemblage of various 
sensible qualities, to wit, smell, taste, colour, touch and sound. But the 
mind is not restricted to any one of them like the external sense-organs. It 
is a common organ for all of them, though in external perception it is effective 
only in association witli a particular sense-organ and not in its unaided capacity. 
It has already been shown that the external sense-organs are absolutely 
ineffective without the co-operation of the mind. The universal jurisdiction 
of the mind as a regulative principle of the different sense-organs is proof 
of its distinctive individuality. The difference of the mind from the four 
materially constituted sense-organs, viz., the organs of smell, taste, vision and 
touch, is further proved by its competency for the perception of the specific 
qualities of a ubiquitous substance. It is thus on a par with the auditory 
organ which also is cognizant of the specific quality of a ubiquitous substance. 



42 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


The mind is cognizant of the specific qualities of the soul; and the auditory 
organ, of that of aM4a. The mind, again, is differentiated from the auditory 
organ on the ground that it is not marked by tho possession of any specific' 
quality, whereas the auditory organ is only an adaptation of alcaia in which 
its specific quality, viz., sound, inheres. Moreover, akaia and for tho matter 
of that tho auditory organ are hold to be possessed of unlimited extension, 
while the mind, as wo shall presently see, is believed by tho Nyaya-Vai^osilja 
philosopher to be of atomic magnitude. Tho intactility of the mind is .also 
capable of being proved by inference, and so it cannot bo confounded with an 
atom of any one of tho four material substances. Tho mind is tho substratum 
of the conjunction wliich is tho non-material cause {asamavayiJearana) of cog- 
nition and the like, the other such substratum being the self; and since the 
self is devoid of touch, tho mind also cannot bo otherwise. Besides, any 
eternal substance possessed of touch, e.g., an atom, is invariably the cause of’ 
a tactile substance. But tho mind is not knovm to have any tactile substance 
as its product. This functional divergence of the mind from all recognized 
tactile substances is also proof of its intactility. All these considerations go 
to show that the mind is a separate organ, particularly when an attempt at 
its identification with the other organs leads to a series of absiurd conse- 
quences.i 

2. The magnitude of the mind 

The problem of the magnitude of the mind has received elaborate attention 
at the hands of the exponents- of the Nyaya-VaiSe§ilca school and of tho 
Mimamsakas, whose views are diametrically opposed to each other. Tho 
sharp difference of opinion and the vigorous advocacy of the respective positions 
have given the problem a proniinence which appears to be out of all propor- 
tion to its intrinsic philosophical importance. After all, it is a side-issue 
between the Vai^esikas and the Mimamsakas, as they are equally agreed upon 
the independent existence of the mind as a separate organ. The Nyaya- 
Vai^esika school holds the view that the mind is possessed of atomic magni- 
tude, while the Mimamsakas maintain that it is of unlimited magnitude lika 
the self. Although the problem primarily arises from the necessity of account- 
ing for the temporal order of the data of experience, in its finn.1 development 
it assumes the character of a metaphysical problem, the psychological issues 
being e'xplained •with more or less equal plausibility in conformity with the 
metaphysical conclusion maintained by each of them. 

The Nyaya-Vai^esika philosophers infer from the regular succession of 
psychical events that the mind is atomic in its magnitude. If the -miTiil were 
not atomic, it would have to be maintained as of unlimited magnitude, as these • 
two kinds of magnitude alone are predicable of an eternal entity, which the 
mind must be held to be. If the mind were a perishable entity, the unbroken' 
continuity of the career of the soul through numberless incarnations would 
be unaccountable. In fact, it is the mind which is responsible for the pos- 

pp. Konthabharapa and Prakafia (Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series), 



THE NYSyA-VAl^ESIKA CONOEPTIOK OF mUD 


43 


sibility of experiences of pleasure and pain'tbat are the invariable concomitants 
of worldly career. Both atomicity and ubiquity are psychologically incapable 
of being proved. They arc rather presuppositions, and as such, of a hypo- 
thetical character. According to the Naiyayikas, the successive emergence 
of psychical phenomena can be satisfactorily explained only if the inter- 
mittent activity of the mind is postulated, which, again, is possible only if 
the mind be of atomic magnitude and thus capable of being coimected with 
only one sense-organ at a time. If the mind were other than atomic m mag- 
nitude, it would be connected with all the organs, and so there would be left 
no reason whj’' all possible cognitions should not take place at once. More- 
over, if the mind were ubiquitous like the auditory organ, it must have a 
medium of limited magnitude for its apparatus. If a part of the body be 
supposed to fiinction as such an apparatus, just as the ear-cavity does for the 
auditory organ, then its activity would be confced to that portion only and 
be neutralized if there be a defect in the apparatus. So the Mimamsakas 
must admit that the whole physical organism must serve as its apparatus. 
But in that case the localization of psychical experiences in the different parts 
of the body will become an impossibility. Thus experiences embodied in 
such propositions as 'One has got pain in the head and pleasure in the foot’ 
uill be left unaccotmted for. The localization of experiences is conditioned 
by the non-material cause {asamavayikarana), i.e., by the localized conjunction 
of the mind and the self. But here the mind and the self being both ubi- 
quitous, and their conjunction being unspecifiable in respect of the location 
of its incidence, the sensations in question should be felt all over the body 
and not in a specified area. If a supersensible subtle medium is requisitioned 
to explain the phenomenon, it would be logically more economical and con- 
sistent to regal'd that medium itself as the internal organ. The Nyaya- 
Vaisosilca position, however, is free from these difficulties, as it admits the 
mind to be atomic in magnitude.^ 

Tlie kfrmamsakas have sought to explain the successive occurrence of 
psychical phenomena by having recomse to the theory of metempirical moral 
force {adrsla), which is supposed to work as. a regulative factor. So the 
ubiquity of the mind does not make the ^aduated emergence of cognitions 
an impossibility. But this appeal to the metempirical moral force as a sort of 
dem cx machina whenever one is confronted with an apparently insurmountable 
difficulty is considered by the Naiyayikas as tantamount to a confession of 
defeat; Udayana in his NydyakmwnanjaK propounds a twofold law relating 
to the function of the moral power, which makes appeal to such power in season 
and out of season a discreditable procedure. In case where the metempirical 
power is effective only by bringing about a combination of all the empirical 
conditions necessary for the production of the effect, there the effect invariably 
materializes on the completion of such combination. So the metempirical power 
fulfils itself as soon as the totality of empirical conditions is realized, and it has 


1 Nyayakustunanjali (Bibliotheca Indica), part 1, p. 348. 


44 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


no other effect to produce. The second law is this that where there is no 
positive medium such as the combination of empirical conditions noted above, 
the metempirical force works out its effect independently and directly. The 
first motion of an atom bn the eve of creation is the outcome purely of such 
moral force. The truth of the first law is illustrated in all cases of causal 
operation open to observation. Thus it is never seen that though the last yam 
is woven on to the warp, the cloth is not produced, or that if it is produced it is 
devoid of its qualities for the default of moral force. The fact of the matter 
is that if in such cases there be any defection on the part of the moral force, 
the conditions of the production of the effect would fail to be realized. But 
when the empirical conditions of production are present, it must be presumed 
that there is no default of metempirical power. Applying the law to the 
present case, we find that' the condition itself of the production of cognition, 
viz., the combination of the object, the organ and the self, will not be produced 
if there is a drawback to suspend the activity of the moral force. But if such 
a combination is present, the effect must materialize ; and if the effect is not 
seen to eventuate in such a case, no appeal to the moral force can be considered 
as a legitimate way of explaining the phenomenon. Thus though the self and 
the sense-organs and the objects of cognition are in relation, the simultaneous 
emergence of cognitions is seen not to take place. So something else is to be 
postulated as an additional condition, and this must be the mind. If the 
mind be ubiquitous, it will be in connection with all the organs; and thus the 
conditions of all sense-perceptions being present in full, there is no reason 
why such cognitions should not take place, all at the same time. If the 
mind be regarded as atomic in magnitude, the difficulty vanishes at once.^ 


The Mimamsakas contend that the arguments of the Nyaya-Vaii§esilva 
philosophers in support of the atomicity of the mind and also against the 
possibility of its unlimited magnitude are inconclusive. If definite analogy 
be any guide to the determination of the natm:e of things, it is in favomr 
of the Mimamsa position. To put the argument syllogistically: Whatever 
is an intaotile substance is of unlimited magnitude, e.g., the self; the is 
such a substance; therefore the mind is of unlimited magnitude. The same 


result is obtained from a different line of argument. Thus the sense-organs 
that are eternal are of unlimited magnitude, e.g., the auditory organ; the 
mind is such an organ; therefore the mind is of unlimited magnitude. More- 
over, the mind being a substance devoid of any specific quality {vUesagv^) 
and also 'being an eternal substance xmproductive of any other substance* 
like time and space, should have the quality of unlimited magnitude liTrc^ itg 
analogues. Again, being the substratxim of the conjunction which is the non- 
material cause of cognition, like the self, the mind should have the same magni- 
tude as the self. It is no use multiplying the logical grounds for establishin 
the ubiquity of the mind, because each one of these arguments is believed 

by the Mimamsakas to-be sufficient to support the conclusion.® It ^ 

— ^ ^^ay , 


^ iTyayakuBumafijali (Bibliotheca Indica), port 1, pp. 360-352. 


Ibid., pp. 346-347. 



THE NYjYA-VAI^BglKA OONOEPTION OE MIND 


45 


however, be said in reply on behalf of the Naiyayikas that these arguments are 
mostly cases of non sequitur. They are all inspired by mere analogy, and as 
such, lack independent cogency. Besides, they render the contact of the Tnind 
with the soul impossible, for it is inconceivable that two eternal and ubiquitous 
substances should have between them a relation which is contingent. And 
even if the possibility of eternal conjunction (ajasamyoga) between them be 
admitted, hs is done by the Mimamsakas, such conjunction will have no 
causal efficiency with regard to the contingent emergence of psychical 
phenomena. 

As for the argument that the simultaneous connection of the mind with 
the sense-organs should make the simultaneous emergence of all possible 
cognitions a necessity, the Mimamsakas point out that it is not capable of 
invalidating the position maintained by them. The phenomenon can be 
explained by the very circumstance of the mind being an organ. It is a law 
that an organ can produce only one cognition at a time. The validity of the 
law is attested by the phenomenon called collective perception {samahd- 
lambanajiiana). Thus when there are several objects, a chair, a table, a pen and 
a clock, all connected with the visual organ, the result is one single cognition 
having for its object the whole group of substances, and not a plurality of 
cognitions corresponding to the pluralilgr of objects. How can it be explained . 
unless you posit the characteristic of sense-organs as formulated in the above- 
mentioned law ? The Naiyayilms retort that if in spite of the contact of .the 
mind with all the organs the different sense-perceptions do not take place, 
then what is the warrant of supposing the mind to be possessed of unlimited 
magnitude ? If the hypothesis is resorted to to account for the simultaneous 
perception of pleasure and pain in different parts of the body, then there is 
no reason for denying the possibility of a single cognition apprehending even 
the objects of different senses, although the simultaneous emergence of 
diverse cognitions of different sense-data is sought to be avoided by the 
above law, viz., the emergence of one sense-perception at one time. The 
Mimamsakas, however, maintain the possibility of one cognition comprising 
diffeient sense-data and cite the example of ‘eating a big cake’, in which the 
taste, odour, touch, sound and colour are simultaneously apprehended in one 
act of cognition. The Naiyayikas are not convinced of the necessity of the 
hypothesis of the unlimited magnitude of the mind even on the evidence 
of the particular experience adduced as proof. It is not capable of being 
definitely decided on the evidence of our experience, whether the cognition is 
one, or even a case of synchronism of multiple cognitions. The verdict of 
experience in this case as in many other cases is absolutely non-committal. 
The point at issue, therefore, can be determined by consideration of the logical 
possibility. If the synchronism of different sense-cognitions is admitted, the 
law of one cognition for one organ has to be thrown overboard. And if, 
alternatively, the cognition in question is regarded as one with a fivefold con- 
tent, it will be very difficult to assign the cognition to the class-categoiy of 
any one of the sense-perceptions. To be explicit, the cognition cannot be 


46 


S. 0. LA\V VOI.TI>n4 


cbaraicteiiized either as visual or as tactual or as auditory or as olfactory or as 
gustatory. Nor can. it he regarded as a mongrel cognition participating in 
the characteristics of all of them, because being mutually exclusive, these 
characteristics cannot coalesce in one substratum. So there appears to- be 
no logical necessity for postulating the existence of a ubiquitous mind. At 
any event, it does not give any advantage over the Nyaya-VaiSesilsa position. 
The only case for supposing the extensive magnitude of the mind is, in the 
Mimamsa contention, the simultaneous cognition of pleasure and pain in the 
different parts of the body. But whether it is a cose of one cognition or 
of two different cognitions happening in quick succession is a matter of dispute. 
There is good reason for believing it to be a case of two successive cognitions 
and for regarding the notion of simultaneity as due to extreme shortness of 
the interval between them.i 

It is a matter of common experience 'thjkt when a man is preoccupied 
with something he does not perceive anything else, though the sense-organs 
are in contact with their relevant objects and are in a state of perfect fitness. 
When charged with inattentiveness, the man simply pleads that his mind was 
fixed on something else, and so the sense-data escaped his focus of attention. 
In other words, only those things are perceived which come within the focus 
of the mind. But if the mind be in contact vdth all the sense-organs and 
thus is supposed to be ubiquitous, there no sense in the assertion that the 
mind is focussed on a particular sense-organ and through it on a particular 
object. It may be argued by the Mimamsakas that it is not the actual contact 
of the mind but rather the desire to know {bvbliiitaa) that is the deciding factor 
in the emergence of successive cognitions. But such desire, reply the 
Naiyayikas, cannot be the condition of the cognition of a particular object; nor 
does the desire to cognize ah object obstruct the emergence of the cognition 
of another object. ■ If the conditions of perception are present, the absence 
of the desire for a cognition does not operate as an obstacle. If it were an 
obstacle, one would not perceive a piece of cloth when one opens one’s eyes in the 
expectation of perceiving a jar. Desire or no desire for a cognition, the latter 
takes place if the object is there and the sense-organ in association with the 
mind is in operation upon the object. Such desire may be the condition of a 
vigorous cognition which leaves behind an effective impression of it, so that 
a revival of it in the shape of memory becomes possible. But the desire to know 
and also attention {pral^idJidna) do certainly play an important part in cases- 
where many things are simtdtaneously presented before the senses and only 
one is cognized. . This is possible because the desire and attention only serve to 
connect the mind with one object (through the relevant sense-organ) and 
detach it from all others. Thus when many sounds are presented, even a faint 
sound is perceived if the desire to know and attention are directed towards it. 
So this only famishes a corroboration of the transferability of the ;h>om 
one organ or one object to ano ther organ or another object, and this is iheom- 

parti. pp. 351-?63; Kusumafijalibodhanl 


THE NYIya-VAISbSIKA CONOEFi'IOK OF MIND 47 

patible with the unlimited magnitude which is predicted of the mind by the 
Mimamsakas.^ 

The Mimamsakas have, however, contended that though the mind is 
ubiquitous, its functional activity {vyapara) is subject to succession in time, 
and this accounts for the successive emergence of different cognitions. But 
the contention lacks cogency. If the function be anything different and 
distinct from its contact, it is not capable of being affiOiiated to any known 
category; and if capable of subsumption imder any one of the categories, 
it wiU run counter to the -Mimainsa position. Thus if the function of the 
mind be of the nature of movement, that will be incompatible with its ubiquity. 
A ubiquitous substance is incapable of movement. If it be a quality and 
eternal at that, no succession can be predicted of it. And if the quality is 
supposed to be a non-etemal event, it caimot possibly be brought into existence 
xmless a limited substance operates for its production. If such a limited 
substance be postulated, it is better to regard this substance as the mind, 
particularly in considerj^tion of the fact that the mind of unlimited magnitude 
does not contribute to a better explanation of the psychical activity of the 
soul.® ■ .. ; V 

The same result is obtained from the consideration of the possibility 
of dreamless sleep (sumpti). Dreamless sleep is characterized by the com- 
plete suspension of all psychical activity. It is therefore possible only when 
the mind is detached from all sense-organs, for the self’s contact with the 
mind which is in association with any sense-organ is held to be the cause 
of a psychical phenomenon. The Naiyayikas therefore suppose that the 
mind enters into a particular gland {pwcltat) on the eve of dreamless sleep and 
is thus dissociated from the sense-organs. The condition of a psychical event 
having thus ceased to exist at that time, the self becomes absolutely 
unresponsive to any external stimulus that may be theoretically supposed to 
come through the channel of a sense-organ.s But such explanation is not 
possible for the klimamsakas who advocate the theory of an all-i)ervasive 
mind. They can only seek to explain the phenomenon by an appeal to the 
metempirical moral force. But that is imdoubtedly an unphilosophical way of 
deciding a philosophical issue. In fact, the ICmamsa theory of the mind 
is hedged round wdth so many qualificaliions and reservations that they only 
serve to accentuate its inherent weakness. 

The Vedanta holds that'the mind is a created substance and so composed 
of parts. The mind, therefore, must be of medium magnitude {madhyama- 
parma/na), i.e., of limited extension, since a composite substance can be 
neither infinite nor infinitesimal in magnitude. This theory is exposed to all the 
difficulties which lie against the ubiquity of the mind. Moreover, if contrac- 
tion and expansion of the mind be assumed to account for the supposed 
simultaneity and the undisputed succession of psychical activities, this would 
only serve to introduce tmneeessary complexity. Contraction and expansion of 


\ NyayakosumafijaU 'with Frakaia, part I, pp, 363*354. 
s Ibid., pp. 366*366. 


* Ibid., pp. 367*368, 


48 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


the mind being events in time must have their causes. Wo have already shown 
that the metempirical moral force cannot he requisitioned for this purpose, 
as it serves rather to throw discredit upon a philosophical theory. Nor con 
attention or the desire to know be supposed to function as conditions of expan- 
sion and contraction, as we have already found that the scope of its activity is 
circumscribed within narrow limits. 

3. Can a plurality of min^ be affiliated to a single organism ? 

Each self is provided with a mind and a sensitive physical organism in 
order that it may be irv a position to cognize objects and to experience pleasure 
and pain in accordance with its past karman. Since different individuals are 
found to have cognitions arising simultaneously and since a single mind of 
atomic magnitude cannot conceivably be shared by them, it must be supposed 
that there are as many minds as there are individual selves. In fact, in the 
Nyaya-Vaiiesilra view, each mind is attached exclusively to a single self and 
can function only inside the organism ■vvith which the self in question is 
connected.! 

It follows from what has been said above that only one mind should 
be postulated for each organism. The assumption of more than one mind 
in an organism is, therefore, not only unnecessary but is also found to come 
into conflict with the presupposition of our experiences. If five different 
minds were postulated as auxiliaries to five different senses and if they could 
operate simultaneously, the successive emergence of psychical phenomena 
would be difficult of explanation. And if they are supposed to work in suc- 
cession, there is no necessity for postulating a plurality of minds, as one mind 
in succession can bring about all the activities under consideration. The 
notion of simultaneity of different cognitions (or volitions) can be explained 
away as an illusion due to the extraordinary swiftness of succession of the 
mental events.* 


A PEEP INTO THE IDEAL OP EDUCATION IN INDO-ARYAN 

SOCIETY 

By 

Mahamahopsdhyaya Vidhusekhara Bhattacharya 

It is evident that none can live without air and space, nor can one grow 
if air and space are not sufficient, just as a man put into a box cannot do. 
Similarly what air and space are to a living animal, education is to a social 
being. This or similar consideration led India once to make her education 
compvilsory, and necessarily free also, for without making it free it can on no 
account be made compulsory. Let us peep into the matter and see how India 
did it. 

1 Kiranavali, p. 164. 

® Nyayabhoaya, in. u. 66-58 Vaifiejikasutra with Upaskara, III. ii. 3 . 



A PEEP INTO THE IDEAL OP EDITOATION IN INDO-ARYAN SOOIETY 49 

Id the IndO'Aiyan society which was originally composed of three classes 
of people, viz. Brahmapas, i.e. those who were mainly entrusted with' edu- 
cation, peace and the spiritual side of the .country; Ksatriyas, i.e. those who 
were engaged to rule and defend the country; and VaiSyas, i.e. those who 
i wore employed to take care of the financial condition of the country by such 
means as trade and agriculture. One class more representing the artisans 
and labourers, i.e. Sudras, was added to it afterwards. We are concerned 
here wfth the society before the fourth dass vms included therein. 

Benders of the social history of India know that the initiation ceremony 
{upanayaTia) is still a compulsory one in Indian society for every boy belonging 
to each of the three classes alluded to. The main object of the ceremony 
was to entrust a boy for his education to a teacher in his house. . In case 
the ceremony was not done in its proper time,i it might wait for a few ynars 
more ^ ; but after those periods the boys who had not gone through the cere- 
mony were regarded as outcasts [vratyas). It means that those bo3re were 
excommunicated, as being un-educated they had no place whatsoever in 
society. Parents had to be careful about it. They must get their sons 
educated. It was their unavoidable duiy {dharma) and it must be observed. 
Indian parents still do it of their own accord, there being no outward force, 
no punishment from the Government. 

Tins responsibility for the education of a boy lay with the parents, no 
► . doubt; but it was equally shared also by society itself, since it had made it 
compulsory. Society hod to see that education was easily accessible to every 
boy without the least consideration of his being rich or poor. It was not 
that some people wore allowed to have special privilege at getting the highest 
possible education, because of their money, as is seen now. The organizers 
of the society we are concerned with could not think of such inequality. 
According to them when a boy was bom he belonged to the entire society, 
his merits and demerits- having direct effect on society for good or for bad. 
Up to a certain age the parents looked after him, but when the time for edu- 
cation came they simply took their son to a teacher and after that they had 
nothing more to think of or do for him. They had no. longer any anxiety 
for their son’s food and shelter or as to who was to look after h im , though 
he was of so tender an age; or above all, as to who was to meet the e:q>enses 
required for his education. .How did ancient Indian society provide for 
these things ? It did everything that was possible in those days. It was 
so organized that nothing which was absolutely required for education -was 
-wanting. The boy taken to teacher’s house lived there as one of the teacher’s 
femily, the members of it being in fact those of his o-wn family, especially 
the wife of the teacher taking in reality the place of his o-vm mother. Thus 
there was no difference whatsoever of treatment towards a student in .the 

* Goaorally tlio proper time for a boy is his eighth year, for a Bujatriya boy 

elovonth year, and for n VaiSya boy twelfth year. Bat it can be done earlier. 

® A Brahmaigia boy xni^t -wait until theaixteonth year, a K^atriya boy until the twentj'- 
socond year, and a Vaifiya boy until the twenty-fourth year. 



60 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


house of his teacher and in the family of his own parents.. The sorrows and 
joys of the teacher’s family were equally shared by the student.^ 

Now, as regards the expenses for the education of the boy. Who was 
to meet them ? Why, the education was absolutely free, and there was no 
question of expenses to be paid by a student. Yet, was not there the question 
of at least the daily .food for both the student and the teacher ? How was 
it provided for, and by whom? Evidently by the society itself and in the 
most remarkably economical and simple way that could be thought of. The . 
food was daily collected by the students themselves begging from door to 
'door, and it was a religious and obligatory duty of every householder to supply 
a student with as much food as he could afford. It was enjoined in the 
scriptures on the wife of a householder (and not on the householder himself, 
as the latter might be more often absent &om the house than the former owing 
to his outdoor works), that when a studei^t approached her for food she must 
not refuse him, otherwise all her previous good actions would be of no avail. 
This threat was in no way an exaggeration, for if owing to want of food 
education in a society were stopped, the evil that might arise from it would 
certainly destroy many a good thing that had already been gained by the 
society. 

That offering of food to students by householders was in no way consi- 
dered a burden by the latter ; it was rather a very pleasant duty for them. And 
the food thus coUected by the students was shared alike by their teacher as 
well as by themselves. 

We have seen that boys were taken for their education to teachers. 
The Sanskrit word for these teachers is Acarya. Its significance is that he 
not only taught his students how to practise what was taught to tliem, but he 
himself practised in his life what he taught. 

One of the most important things that was always kept in view and 
followed by the students with great care under the grddance of their teachers 
was the restraint of their senses coupled with the observance’of strict celebacy 
during the period of study. Moreover, generally the teachers were not rich 
people and the students who lived with them had to lead a life of much hardship 
borne with a cheerful mind, and they had to discharge various household 
duties equally with the family members of the teachers themselves. This 
gave them an additional benefit of practical experience in various ways of a 
householder’s duties whose life they aspired to adopt, in most cases after 
finishing the courses of their respective studies. 

The.se are then in brief the fundamental ideas of education and the arrange- 
ments that were made for carrying them out in practice by the members of 
the Indo-Aryan society in ancient times. 


* Tho folloTiring sontonco from the Ohandogya Upanifad (IV. 10. 3) is oh rf- 

It %rill diow tho kindness, tenderness and affection nF ^ ^ very 


ngi^cant. It \rill diow tho kindness, tondomess nnd aCection of tho \rifo of 


student irho did not ono day take ) 
sawed knowlodgo, eat. WTiy, pray, do you not oat T ’ 


A HIDDEN LANDIIARK IN THE HISTORY OE JAINISM 

By 

Db. H. L. Jain, M.A., LL.B., D-Litt. 

,In my article on ‘Sivabhuti and 6ivaiya’ » I have tried to identify Siva- 
bh^ti, the author of the Botika schism according to the Mula Bha^ya, with 
Arya Sivabhiiti of the Ealpa Shtra Sthaviravali on the one hand and 6ivarya 
the author of the Digambara ■work Aradhana on the other, so as to make the ' 
three names referring to one and the same person only who flourished 609 
years after the Nirvapa of Mahavira. One of the verses of the Mula Bha§ya 
fh>m where I took my start makes mention of ‘Kodi^na-ltutte Vira’ 2 as sub- 
sequent successors of ^ivabhuti, and the purpose of the present paper is to 
make an investigation for discovering the lineal descendants of Sivabhiiti or 
Sivarya. 

My first inquiry brings to light the following facts: — 

1. Sivabhiiti’s pupil and successor, according to the Sthaviravali, was 

Ehadra? 

2. Bhadra or S^ri Bhadra, according to a Sravai;ia Belgola inscription, 

became universally known as BJiadmbahu, who had for his pupil 
' Candragupta.* 

3. It is this BhadrabS.hu, and not the earlier one who, according to 

the 6ravaija Belgola inscription No. 1, foretold the twelve 
years’ famine and migrated to the South from Ujjaini. This 
BhadrabS.hu is given a special title Swamifi 

4. The Acarya who enjoys the special and almost exclusive title of 
. SwSimi ® in the Digambara Jaina literature is Sarmnta Bhadra the 

1 Contributed' to the Nagpur University Jioumal, No. 9. 

3 'd 11 11 x x x % 

* See Ins. 40 (64) : 

C^] dt frr *nf«nsfrfrt ’sru: 1 



w jrfi\ wftwr b 1 b 

VTB^rfiTsiT ^s»rrai5?fdsTr rat«i «r 

3'8eo Batna-karati4a-6ravaV;acara. Introduction by Pt. JugaUdshoie Mukhtar, p. 8 : 

“^T^, NX ^ wac % ^9 ‘tNwm’ NRd wxlNd fxjifvff d sst wsift 

Nxft xfirer WNT wiuwitN ux-m xr x i xf 'XTxrxt uxr 9 w*t ntn: 
(1^) % XIN Xl’CX fxiNT X NX WINiq XUWiWf XIN TNXT ^ eUX 


52 


IJ. C. LAW VOIiUMK 


ftuthor of Aptamimatpsa. Tradition nssoointes iiim with ^ivakoti 
or ^ivayanay Ho is also said to liavo joined tho tomplo raised by 
6ivakoti and to havo rdvoalod an imago of Candra jirablia ® out of 
an imago of iSiva, as well ns to havo started his career at 
Fateliputra, and from there to havo travelled to Malwa, Sindha 
and T^haldm and subsequently to Kunclptirn and Karohatakn.*' 

6. Samantabhadra is celebrated in tho ^votiimbara ‘Pattavnlis as ah 
Acarya of tbo Gandrakula and tlio founder of tho Bannvdsi 
. Qaccka?^ 

Let us now see what those facts load us to. Bhadra and Bhadrabahu are 
easily identifiable on tho basis of tho information furnished by tho Sravaiia 
Belgola inscription ITo. 40 (64) according to which Bhadrabahu’s former name 
was Bhadra or Sri Bhadra, n and there appears to be nothing that would 
revolt against this identification. As regards Samantabhadra and Sfimanta- 
bhadra, there is practically no difforonco in tho two names. Tho lengthening 
or the shortening of tho vowel is of no consequence. The fact that Samanta- 
bhadra founded the Banavasi Gaecha clearly shows his association with tho 


% ftr srm vw ^ ^ arar % i vtlt "ft v# rnsr 

me, mu u ’gift 'smsi fijruT v, 

vui vv vm UV5I ft ^ nuui uf m ’roft % ftr * u ft ffnut '•ttfwv 

ufufV ft I ” 

f ’ i n 

(^ravtt^o Belgoln Ins. No. 105 (254).) * fnf t uftvt fituftfmrrUT fstmUST: 
uftft 1 ’ ( firsKW uiatui 1 ) 

mm uiwsaiv u ftft finSft uvtsj i 

muMfaaif fbi ugfim ii \ 

f^rSefT vfirsT ^ug^ft i 

uann! umngv ejvftmvft umu n ii 

^rm 8 uusfmsf^ifuu: mm, urrovui’S'mfiv of Nemidatto. 

® ^ viaEf%guwBjuai^ fft uvr anfisdi i 

it 

vratfs qi <’4iAf uswE fi rnt w ia vuta i 
vrmff ii -o ii 

. Srava^a Belgola Ins. No. 64 (67); also quoted by Nemidatta in his ArBdhana-knthako 9 a 

uruuwfl n < ii 

^apsvluiuufsni of i 

« i mrraft) i l^s aPtfeqf: 

"V uuviftfu vtuuanrr^ n a , (ft«RM’C«l\l ) Also see uera^iv-TA ^ 

. (l^) publidiedin q 6Ui<gtS'au V of | 

** See footnote 4 above. 




A HIDDEN LANDMABK IN TpE HISTOKY OF JAINISM ^ 63 

South where Banavasi was the name of North Karnataka. It was also the 
name of the principal town in that area called Kramcapura, situated on the 
river Barada, an affluent of the Tungabhadra.^* The foundation of the 
Banavasi Gaccha could be better understood in the light of the information 
about Samantabhadra preserved in the Digambara traditions according to 
which he, having started his career at Pataliputra, carried on his religious 
propaganda in Malwa, Sindha and Thakka (Punjab) and then travelled on to 
Kancipura and Karahataka. The last of these places is no doubt identical 
with Karada in the district of Satara in the Bombay Presidency, and this being 
so, Kancipura, it appears to me, should be identified with Krauncapura in 
Karnataka and not with the town of that name in the Tamil country near 
Madras. The word Vaidiia which in all probability qualifies KancSpura in the 
traditional verse, may denote the river Bedavati which was another name 
of Barada on wliich Krauncapura was situated, and it may have been parti- 
cularly used to distinguish this place from the more famous town of the same 
or similar name. 

Other Digambara traditions associated with Samantabhadra become 
similarly intelligible if we try to understand them in the light of the ^vetambara 
traditions connected with Samantabhadra. That he joined the temple raised 
by 6 ivakoti can easily be understood to mean that he associated himself with 
the organization of ^ivabhiiti or &varya as a pupil or associate, and that he 
revealed the image of Gandraprabha out of the Siva image “ may be a fine 
allegory of the fact that he established the Banavasi Gaccha of the Candra 
School within Sivarya’s Samgha. Manatufiga the author of Bhaktamara 
Stotra is said to have belonged to this very Candra Kula just four generations 
after Samantabhadra 1 ® and Kanakamara Muni the Digambara author of the 
ApabhramiSa Kavya Karakandaeaiiu also calls himself as belonging to the 
Candra Gotra.w 

The time of Samantabhadra according to the ^vetambara Pat^yalis. is 
also favourable to this identification. According to the Tapagaccha Pattevali 
Vajrasena attained heaven 620 years after Mahavira’s Nirvana. He was 
succeeded by Candra Suri who in his turn was succeeded by Samantabhadra.^® 


15 gee Geographical Dietionorj' of Ancient ond Mediaovol India by Nnndolol Dey. 

See footnote 9 above. It does not really suit the context in the verso to interpret vaidiia 
as Vidi£tt,' identical with Bhilsa, in Malwa wliich country has olready been mentioned before in 
the verse. Hence Lewis Bice, who first interpreted the iravapa Belgola Inscriptions, translated 
it 08 ‘the out of the way KancI ’ and Mr. ‘Ayyangar translates it as the ‘ for off city_ of 
Eun^ 

“ H €Nr!n- » 

M B fl o'*- ( i 

16 See footnote 8 above. See Pottavali-samuccaya. 

1 etc. { lo* ss. i-2). . 

i X X X fi'Mvikvi i stk 

X 





64 


U. 0. LAW VOLUMK 


He could thus be easily regarded as a junior contemporary of ^ivaryn who 
organized his Order in 609 after Nirvana.^® Tliis period is quite siiitablo for 
Samantabhadra the author, of Aptamimamsu.so 

' Having thus merged Bhadra of the Sthaviifivali and Bhadrabahu of the 
Digambara inscriptions into one personality, and having identified Samanta- 
bhadra of the 6vetan:\^ara Pattavalia with Samnntabhadi-a of Digambara 
literature, lot us now see whether the two that omorgo 'from those identifications 
could be further resolved into one. For this purpose let us concentrate upon 
the Sravapa Belgola inscription No. 1 which is the earliest and therefore the 
most reliable authority about Bhadrabahu and his activities. A careful 
reading of this inscription leaves us in no doubt about tlio fact that the Bhadra- 
bahu who foretells the twelve years’ famine at Ujjaini is not one of the five 
Srutakevalis, but the one who comes long after him in the lino.^r He- must 
therefore be regarded as Bhadrabahu II, and the famine which he foretold 
must be the one which is mentioned in the AvnSyaka Curni and jMalayagiri’s 
Vritti according to which a very severe famine lasting for twelve years occiured 
at the time of Vajra Swami who, in consequence of it, tomed into the South.2® 
Vajra Swami according to the Pat^valis was the predecessor of Vajrasena, 
and lived from 496 to 684 years after Nirvana, i.e. just about the time of 
Samantabhadra whose great-grand-predeccssor ho was. Not only that, but 
according to the Vira-vam^a/oali,^ Vajra Swami passed his Caturmasa in the 
South at a place called Timgia which I am inclined to locate at the Tugabhadra 
where we have already located Kraunoapura or Kancipura of Samantabhadra, 
not far away from the Katavapra at 6ravana Belgola where Acaiya Prabha- 
candra, according to the inscription, ended his life. 

. Another very important clue furnished to us by this inscription is that it 
gives to this Bhadrabahu the designation of Swami which in literatxire has 
almost exclusively been used for Samantabhadra. In fact even great -writers 


“ uw I 

m ii isa. n etc. ( i 

■ so See Pt. Jugalkishore’s ‘S-wami Samantabhadra’ pub. us Introduction to Batna-karanda- 
Sravakacara, pp. 116fi. Samantabhadra ia traditionally assigned to the second centiuy of the 
Vikrama era by the Bigambaras. 

See footnote 5 abbve. I 


um Tm 808 ; arrai 'O'SB ^ ) 




vfri gfjmr orirof 8:^ i ^ 



A niDDRN r.A\nMARK IK THK HISTOKY OF JAINISM 


55 


like Vidyaiianda ^ and Vudiraja SOri so have refoned to him only by the title 
of Swfinii without mentioning the name Samantabhadra, and this they coidd 
do because they know that their readers would tmderstand nobody else but 
Samantabhadra bj’ that title. This piece of evidence taken together with all 
that has been said above goes to establish almost beyond doubt that Samanta- 
bhadra and Bhadrabahu II are identical. 

This identification of Bhadra, Samantabhadra, Samantabhadra and 
Bliadrabuhu into one person, whom lot us now call Bhadrabahu II, leads us 
into corollaries that appear to bo startling. The first of these is that we must 
accept Kundakunda to bo tho pupil of this Bhadrabahu II who ivithin the 
Digambara hierarchy is no other than Samantabliadra the author of Apta- 
mlmamsa himself. Kundalcunda in ids Bodlia Fahuda clearly mentions him- 
self to bo tho pujiil of Bhadrabahu si who could bo no other than this Bhadra- 
bahu II. Tho only difficulty that might come in the way of this identification 
is that hero Bhadrabahu is said to be acquainted with all the Twelve Afigas 
and tho Fourteen Furvas and was thus a ^rata-jnBni. But we must remember 
that our Bhadrabahu who was definitely diffieront from and much posterior to 
Bhadrabahu I has also boon called a Sruta-jMn! in a number of inscriptions.^^ 

This point becomes still more clear when we come to consider the case of 
Bhadrabahu who is the author of tho ten Niiymktis included in the l§vetam- 
bara Agamas. Their author is also claimed to be a ^rutakevali but 
ubviousl}' ho is not tho same as Bhadrabahu I because in his AvaSyaka Niryukti 
he mentions events with persons and dates right from tho time of Lord 
IMahuvira down to 609 years after lus Nirva^a.so Ho also pays a great tribute to 

^ sfcrrsruTO 

g i t a q i Jjnoufv i i 

> ut me JRfw ^ i a 

<17^ i 

ounsr i i 

s* Soo, for oxamplo, footnote 4 abovo. Also seo Ina. 108 (268), voraos 8-9. 

For oxamplo, Malayogiri {12th cont.) in his commontaiy on Pindn Niryukti Bays— 



TO TO t 

In tho on onoiont urork, w find — 

CTqwBpi yp ci fTOT^n smssii^ i 

so 7ho30 occur in connection %rith tho vatiouB Bchisms that took place since the time of 
Lord Mah&vlru. Tho versos that mention their years ore «s follows: — 

?nfUT TO I 

fbsm 5t TO tr ii 

'gssfNt stroci i 

siraoTflV 5? TOffT ^ 8 K 


66 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


Arya Vajra who lived from 496 to* 684 years after Nirvana and to Arya Eaksita 
who was his contemporary .oi From all these mentions it appears that the 
author himself lived about 609 of Nirvana and was personally associated with 
Arya Vajra about whom ho has given us some personal information and who is 
credited with having split up the iSruta into two parts Kalikn and Drstivada 
which were further split up into four by Arya Eaksita.^s In my opinion 
the author of the Niryulctis and the teacher of Kundakunda, the author of 
Aptanumamsa and the head of the Banavasi Gaccha and Candra Kula and the 
sage who foretold the twelve years’ famine and migrated to the South are all 
one and the same person, and that person was the pupil or associate of 
Sivarya. 

This is not all the glory tfiat 6ivarya has to his credit. There is yet another 
bright jewel to his crown which I shall now proceed to introduce to you. Let 
us examine the Pra^asti which we find at the end of the Tattvarthadhigama 
Bhasya.33 Here we are told that the author Umasvati was the grand-pupil 
of Sivafri and pupil of Ghosanandi. Neither of these two dignitaries has- so 
far been identified. ^ivaM may be easily identified with Sivarya. Besides 
the name being the same in the two cases except for the variable suffix, 
there is the name of his pupil with his name ending in Nandi which appears 
in the names of Sivarya’s teachers and was a favourite name-suffix with the 
teachers of the Nandi Sarngha, while it is prctically non-existent in the early 
Svetambara lists of names.®^ Another piece of information that we find 
in the Prafiasti is that Umasvati was bom at Nyagi’odhika. Since I had 
identified Rahavirapura where Sivarya organized his Order with Rahuri 


See verses 763-778. 





B S II 





VgWTV I 

‘ II 8 B 

maviivIh ii ^ I 

See Pt. Sukhlal Saijighavi’s remarks on the praSssti in his introduction t , 
pp. 4S. . • 

s* The names of Sivarya’s teachers mentioned in his Aradkana are- Jinanandi 
and Mitianandi, for which and for other information on the subject see mv na * ™^®Supta 

and fevarya’ in Nagpur University Journal, No. 9. . ' . SiTObhuti 


A HIDDEN LANDMARK IN THE HISTORY OF JAINISM 


67 


in the Ahmadnagar district, I looked into the locality for this name as well, 
and to my pleasant suiprise I find a place called Nighoja in the same district 
and not very far from Mhuri. Nighoja may easily be identified with 
Nyagrodliika the bfrth-place of XJmasvati. 

A few more statements in the PraSasti that deserve a close study are as 
follows : — 

1. Umasvati’s teacher of Agama was Vacanacarya Mtila. 

2. Though bom at Nyagrodhika he travelled on to Kusmnapura (Fatali> 

putra in the North). 

3. It was at Kusumapura that he explained or elucidated the 

Tattvarthadhigama, i.e. wrote the Bhasya. 

4. This Bhasya was written on a work which he had compiled earlier 

on the basis of the utterances of the Arhat and the traditions that 
had come do^vn to him through a line of teachers, on finding 
people afflicted with pain and vitiated in their outlook through 
improper ideas. 

These statements could not be understood fully unless one takes into 
consideration the whole position of the Samgha as it appears to have developed 
at that time. Sivarya was succeeded by BhadrabShu II who in his turn was 
succeeded bj' Kundakundacarya. Umasvati being the pupil of Ghosanandi 
who was another pupU of ^ivarya, was obviously Kundakunda’s contemporary 
and rival. Kundakunda tried to introduce serious changes into the creed 
as well as the practice of the monks. While &varya had permitted cloth- 
bearing to all nuns and some monks xmder special circumstances, Kunda- 
lomda considered the position anomalous and sought to make nakedness as 
the absolute rule for all monks, allowing no exception whatsoever.s® And 
since women could not for obvious reasons bo asked to give up clothes they 
were declared as unfit for salvation and could remain in the Order as apprentices 
only.*’ Elaborating the cryptic teaching of his preceptor the author of 
Aptamimamsa that the true saint (Apta) is one who is free from all weakness 
and obscurity (Bosa and Avarapa},** he preached that an all-wise saint must 

See Aradhanu, GatM 79-83. See my paper on '^ivsbhuti and ^ivSrya’, footnote 6. 

viftrvw B fo B 

sr^ar vftareJTSH ^ sreu w i 

ifr Mp OT spcfyr ’ft fWmrd ti tc n 

tpifr wuiutur n B ( ) i 

37 wwT huN hi I 

ulT wfr’T wftw ’ll ■'n^ a 8 ( ) i 

B « a 

H fw^in?r | 


sis 


B. C. LAW VOLtTME 


be believed to be free from all feelings of pleasure and pain.s® He was not 
satisfied by merely putting forth these views; he appears to have proceeded 
to see that every member of the Order conformed to the rules. Those who 
would not or could not' do so, were to be expelled and all the texts .that went 
against this creed were to be suppressed. A piquant situation must have 
developed in the Samgha, specially amongst those members of it who came 
within the exception to ^ivarya’s rule and would not forget or forego the 
study of the previous te^s. Umasvati appears to have led this section. It 
was during this period of tension when feelings ran high on both sides that 
he wrote the Tattvartha Sutra in which he logically proved the position 
with regard to the/ existence of hunger and thirst in a Kevali,^ but did not 
openly raise any question with regard to the wearing of clothes by monks 
and salvation for women, though food for thought was provided on these 
aubieots in the definition of the Nirgranthas^i and in the various points of views 
from which the absolved beings might be considered.^® Umasvati probably 
offered this work as his compromise formula. But Kundakunda and his 
adherents rejected it probably at a session specially convened for the purpose.^® 
The consequence was that the no-changers had to leave the Order — ^they were 
expelled from it — and so they formed a separate Order of their own which came 
to be called the Ydpanlya SamghaM 

It was with a memory of these bitter experiences that Umasvati, probably 
with a band of the younger members of his section who could maderbake the 
long journey, went to the North with a view to effect a union with the com- 
munity there. It was in this way that he came to Kusumapura where he wrote 
the Bhasya in which he expressed (Spastam) what he had kept understood 
in the Sutras with a view to avert the inevitable crisis. 

Kundakunda, on his part, having thus got .rid of all the recalcitrants, 
proceeded to establish the new Order with a thoroughness which was extra- 

’life I 

Wvnu ^ II II ( ifPTTTyv ) I 

•** See 

I, C, 

■** The question appears to me to have been put to the vote of the congregation by Kunda- 
kunducurya in the form of the verse preserved for us in his 

• ^ VT rf I 

For an account of the activities of the YBpanlyas see ‘ Yapaniya Sangha — a Jain sect * 
Upadliyo in the Bomoay University Journal, I, 0, May 1933, and 
«BT «a\5I by Pt. sn^m in lus vRtVTO. " How the Yupiintyas .were 

subsequently reabsorbed into the major community and how their sacred books wore sis 
rondo occeptablo tp tho lottcr is being dealt with by mo in a separate paper. ** 



A HIDDBK LA^’DMAKK IK THE HISTOBY OF JAINISM 69 

ordinary. He mercilessly suppressed everything that went against his .prin- 
ciples in the slighest degree, or reminded of anything of their past affiliations. 
He even suppressed his own name which was Padmanandi « because it aroused 
memories of the Nandi Samgha. He, in all probability, proliibited the study 
of all the former Agamas which were henceforth taken as totally lost and made 
up for the deficiency by liimself writing a large number of texts called Pahudas 
which henceforth became the sole authority on all matters religious or philo- 
sophical. He called his organization the Mula Samgha in view of the fact 
that he went back to the position of the last Tirthamkara whose original 
creed he claimed to have revived.^^ It is also possible that this sigiiificant 
name suggested itself to him readily because it was borne by the Vacakacarya 
who had taught Umasvati and probably himself also, and therefore he indirectly 
wanted to commemorate him. 

The difficulty that still remains in regarding Samantabhadra as the 
preceptor of Nundakundacaiya is that inscriptions and PattavalM persistentiy 
mention Samantabhadra after Kundakunda and not before him. My explana- 
tion of this tendency on the part of all subsequent writers is that they were 
interested in showing Kundakundacarya as the first and foremost of all the 
teachers of the present age, and therefore a deliberate attempt was made, to 
obscure all the previous history. Secondly, there have been more than one 
Samantabhadra even after K.imdakimdacarya.'is Jn spite of all that has been 
said in support of the Ratna-karan^-sravakacara beiug regarded as the work 
of Samantabhadra the first, 40 I now feel convinced that it was certainly not 
the work of the same author tvho vTote the Aptamimamsa, particularly 
because it explains the word Do§a in a sense which could never be intended 
to be conveyed by it by the author of the Aptamimamsa.®^ I think the 
Raina-kara'^da-irdvakacara was written subsequent to Kundakundacarya’s 
preachings and in support of them. The author of this work may also have 


4S 




8" t8 ) 


*0 Traditiob attributes to him the authorship of 84 such tracts of which about a dozen ore at 
present available to us. See Fravocanasara: Introduction by Dr. A. N. Dpadhye, pp. xxiv fi. 


^ B 


Six such Samantabhadras liave been noticed by Ft. Jugalkishore Mukhtar, for which 
see his Introduction to Batna.karapda■firS.^'akacara> pp. 8-9. 

Seoonfe. 

sr WTJP 9 8 1 H { t ) I 

See on verses 4 and 6 of quoted above in footnote 

38. Also see verse 93 where the existence of the feelings of pleasure and pain are recognized 
in a Viiaraga, and the whole argument there rests on that fact. 

tjTTOJff «PBr5^t<*rrwrt 8 



60 


B. C. BAW VOIilTMT: 


been the teacher of 6ivakoti the author of Bntnamalfi which is certainly not 
the work of our ^ivabhhti or ^ivarya the author of tlio Arudhana.Bz The 
use of the title Swami as well as the attrilmtion to him of incidents which were 
really associated with his earlier namesake may bo duo to confusion or even, 
no wonder, deliberate. 

The results of my investigations in this i}apor may bo summed up as 
follows : — ' 

1. Sivabhuti who, according to the Mula Bhasya, founded the Bodika 

Samgha was identical with Arya Sivabhfiti mentioned in the 
Sthaviravali, and 6ivarya the author of the Aradhana, as well as 
^ivaSrl, the grand-teacher of Umasvati. 

2. Bhadra, who was mentioned, in the Sthaviravali as tlie pupil and 

successor of Sivabhuti, was identical nith Bhadrabahu the author 
. of the Niryulrtis, the divine who foretold the twolvo'years’ famine 
at Ujjainl and migrated to the South and the teacher of 
Eundakunda, as well as with Samantabhadra the founder of 
the Banavasi Gaccha and Samantabhadra the author of the 
Aptamimamsa, 

3. Kundakunda introduced drastic changes in the creed of the Order 

which were unacceptable to one section led by Umasvati who 
wrote the Tattvartha Sutra as a compromise formula, but being 
unsuccessful in avertii^ the crisis he went away to Kusumapura 
where he wrote the Tattvarthadhigama Bhasya. 

4. Those who left the Samgha in consequence of Kimdakimdacaiya's 

reforms, or were expelled from it, formed themselves into an 
independent community wliich came to be called the Yapaniya 
' Samgha. 

6. Eundakunda tried to efface all the vestiges of the past including 
literature, and called his organization the Mula Samgha. 

6. Samantabhadra who is mentioned in inscriptions and Pattavahs 

after Eundakunda is different from the author of the Apta- 
mimSmsa and the pupil of 6ivarya, wlule he may be the author 
of the Katna-karanda-^ravakacara and teacher of Sivakoti the 
author of Batnamala. 

7. As ^ivarya organized his Order in 609 after Nirvana,- we may allow 

20 years more to him after it and another 20 years to his successor 
Samantabhadra or Bhadrabahu. II, and thus we get about 660 
years after Nirvania as the time for Eundakunda and Umasvati. 


*8 Foj the text of wid critical remorks on the same by Bandit Nathuram Premi 

(UT. U. 



DID THE BUDDHA KILL THE CHILD IN >IAN (BSOW 1 

% ' 

Pbof. N. K. Bhagwat, M.A. . 

Introduction : 

0 

It is the fate of World Teachers that they are liable to be misunderstood 
by those that surround them. The life, thoughts, speeches, actions and 
dealings of these Teachers are not generally appreciated' in their ultimate 
value by the common run of people, who differ from such Teachers both in 
degree and in kind. These dissenters are so deeply sunlc in their own con- 
victions and way of thinking that they are unable to isolate themselves 
dispassionately and enter into the spirit and letter of these World Teachers 
to truly evaluate them as thinkers and guides. The dust of prejudice and 
perverse understanding combined with partiality to one’s own convictions, 
narrowness of outlook and absence of a spirit of liberal interpretation — are a 
few causes as to why Great Teachers and Prophets were greatly traduced 
during their lifetime and it was only after centuries that their greatness, 
efficacy of teachings, the profound significance of their mission in life, and the 
grandeur and glory of their personality were unfolded to the vision of nest 
generations. The same fate has awaited Gotama, the Buddha, who is rightly 
•called the ‘Teacher of gods and men’.i During his lifetime there were 
many ascetics and Brahmins and they misunderstood him being misinformed 
and Gotama had, several times, to enter upon a vigorous protest against false 
charges and wilful distortion of his teachings.^ In some places he tried to 
reconcile and explain his position, where there was honest difference or incon- 
sistency or apparent contradiction, d&covered by other sectarians in the usual 
course of comprehension.^ He personally carried on talks and controversies 
with notable personalities of other Faiths and clearly demonstrated to them 
his unfli-nnbing position and the drawback or defect in their imsoning. He 
was conscious of the fact that his teachings ran counter to the then prevailing 
principles and bend of hmnan mind and m fact he wanted to re&ain &om 
propagating his doctrines to a people who were sunk in lust (Alaya).^ During 
the centuries that followed Gotama, his teachings passed through various 
stages of development, expansion and ramification, that gave rise to not less 


^ ‘Ui5T ’—TOpeated in so many suttas, e.g. 

(No. 7) Devonagar! Edition, page 27 (by Rajvado and others). 

a fwrat, u»mr8’in wuar gwn urn wr- 

j (No. 22)-SRf^fw. DevanagSii Edition, page 99, by 

' Rajvode and others (1919).' 

3 E.g. Edition— Hanthavsddy Eteas— 

page 291. Here in his conversation with he explains how ho ((Sotama) may be desig- 
nated as wnil, ^^l-bnt 

without jmy detriment to his original doctrines. 

* yiisiq ^ w i tit wr w. ^t^wtr irsnsapit 

Devanagari Edition of the Bomboy University, poge 7. , 


62 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


than 18 dilFerent sects, i so that the last charge that was brought against 
Gotama was that he preached nothing but NihiliSm (6unyavada). In this 
paper a humble attempt is made to oxamino one aspect of this Nihilism 
which is summed up in one word, ‘Bhunahu’ (killer of the child) and which 
•constitutes a charge, brought against Gotama by tho Paribbajaka hlagandiya 
in the Majjhima-nikaya.^ 

The Paribbajaka^ : 

The Paribbajakas formed one of tho prominent sects in Gotama’s times. 
Their creed was ‘A belief in perfect bibs after death for tho self, purged from 
evil and as a conviction that the bliss can bo won by Brahmacariya (celobaoy), 
by freedom from all evil in acts, words, aims and mode of livelihood All 
these four standards were bodily incorporated in Gotama’s Noble Eightfold 
Path and the last of the four (Ajivo) gave tho Ajivakas their special name as 
a separate seot.^ The Buddha differed from tho Paribbajakas as is attested 
by the conversion of Sariputta and Moggallana,** who were the Paribbajakas. 
The goal of the latter was DeatlUessness (Amata), ‘which to them probably 
meant birth in the world of the Brahma’.® Gotama has made free use of 
this goal of the Paribbajakas in his sermons. He, however, was known as 
‘Vibhajjavadi’ or Champion of the Method of Analysis and he taught causes 
and effects of states of consciousness.’ Again the Paribbajakas were- 
speculators in the questions bearing on metaphysics, philosophy and ethics. 
In the Majjhima-nikaya (Majjhima Pa^asaka) their speculative philosophy 
has been repeatedly mentioned and it concerns itself with etemality or non- 
etemality of the world, identity or difference of life and spirit, life of the 
Arhant after death, and so forth. Purther, the Paribbajakas stigmatized 
Gotama as teaching ‘non-action’ or. non-activism.® In general, they were 
not ascetics, except in so far as they were celebates. They were Sophists or 
Teachers, who passed 8 or 9 months of every year wandering from place to 
place for the purpose of exchanging in friendly conversational discussions on 
matters of ethics, philosophy, nature-lore and mysticism. Many a time they 

1 Mentioned in the Kathavatthu. Alao compare page 97 of the ‘Patna Univemity Beader* 
ship Lectures on Abhidhanuna’, 1929. 

® (No. 76), Sevanagari Edition (Bombay 

University), page 173 and onward. 

® The Pali names are: — 

i . ' ' 

* The head of the soot 'W’as . For his views compare 

Vol. I, — DevanagarJ Edition (Bombay University), pages 64-66. 

® — ^Devan&garl Edition (Bombay University), pages 

60-66 8. ^§1-^8. 

® oL also ^ Vol. 1). 

’ Tho oft-quoted verse: 

^ B aj^xafajl— Devanagar lEdition, page 61. 

*. Pali word: 



DID THE BUDDHA KILL THE CHILD IN MAN (bhCNA) ? 


63 


were hair-splittors and showed a muddle head, ^riiey possessed big hermitages 
and the Niliayos mention a few Paribbajakas of emmencb and enjoying social 
status and public esteem.^ It is a matter of common knowledge that the 
celebrated philosopher of the Vedanta, Shanlcara, is designated as the ‘ Aoharya 
I of the Paribbajakas’.- 

Meaning of Bhimaha : 

The word Bhunahu is explained . by Buddhaghosa as Bhuti-hanaka, 
Vuddhi-nasaka or destroyer of what is jirosperous or glorious (in man).^ , The 
Pali dictioimry connects it nuth Bhuta-{-gha(hana)’ or a destroyer of beings. 
It is instructive to note in this connection that the Pali word Bhimahfi 
is traceable to Sanskrit word * Bhrupaha * or ‘Idller of the embryo’ or ’causing 
abortion’.'* Again the word ‘Bhrupa’ in Sanskrit is applied to a learned 
‘ Brahmin’.® On looking to the context in the Majjhima-nikaya,' however, it 
is used by the Paribbajaka Magandiya, who maintains that Gotama’s des- 
cription as a ‘Bhunahu’ occurs in the sacred scriptures of the Paribbajakas as 
well.® It is not easy at this stage to find out what exact texts are meant 
in this connection ; but, later on, from the conversation between Gotama and 
Magandiya after their meeting, Gotama refers to the ‘Doors of the Senses’ 
and the influx of impressions, instincts and emotions that is caused by them to 
arise in human mind. It is a woll-lmo%vn fact that Gotama has, so many 
times, exhorted his Bhikkhus to exercise control over his sense organs,^ and 
for tliis puipose he has prescribed various methods and given practical direc- 
tions. In doing this, however, it is contended by 'the rival sects of Gotama 
that he tried to deal too summarily vdth the natural and primary instincts 
and emotions by unnecessarily and uimaturally stopping the gates and ‘ per- 
versely attempting to play off the instinct of repulsion and the accompanying 
emotion of disgust against other emotions and instincts which are of more 
abiding value for the religious life’.® If we enquire as to what constitutes, 
the ‘man’ or ‘being’, it means not the physical form (B>upa) so much as the 
‘individuality’ of ‘self ’ which in turn depends upon the expansion and develop- 
ment of feoUngs, perception, predi^osition and contingent consciousness. 
The latter group forms the ‘crux’, ‘child’, ‘embryo’ or ‘Bhuti’ (glory) in 

* X have frooly dravn for this information about tho Paribbajakas upon the ‘Dictionary 
of Pali Propor Names’, by Malalosokora, vol. II, pogos 160-lGl. 

^ Tho opithot ‘ ^ applied to Shanltara and Ids successors. 

® Quoted from tho Puli*Englisli Dictionory by T. W. Bhys Davids and W. Stede, page 
32, under ‘ Bhunaha ’. 

* * Sonskrit-English Dictionary’ by V. S. Apto, Poona (1800), pago 829, under 

quoting Yojnavalkyo 1. 04 (Mandnlik’s Edition): ^ 

® Pdli-English Dictionary quotes J. V., 266 ‘ ’ ‘which is explained in tho commen- 
tary os ‘ 'SHUT ’ | 

® ‘ ul uturfu ’. MoiJbima.nikSya — ^Majjhima PannSsaka, Devonagari 

*Edition (Bombay University), (76)i 172-183. 

* verses 300-361. 

® ‘Gotama Buddha’ by K. J. Saunders (The Heritage of India Series), Calcutta, 1022, 
page 07. 



64 


B. C. LAW VOLUMK 


man and to suppress it is to destroy the self (Bhrfma). As for tho Tneaning 
of the word‘Bhunahii’ as ‘killer of a learned Brahmin’ it is true that Gotama 
attacked Brahminical social and religious institutions and tried to elevate 
other castes and to that extent he killed tho ‘birth-right’ of tho Brahmins and 
emphasized on the ‘worth-right’ of man. Mctaphbrically ho. did Idll tho 
Brahmin and Brahmanism. ThuSi when wo examine all the meanings, 
given above, of tho word ‘ Bhunahu ’, we come to realize that the word means 
‘one who destroys (or suppresses) by his teachings the essential nature of Beings, 
which consists of their primary and fundamental instincts and emotions*. 
Gotama thus, accordiiig to tho Paribbajaka Magandiya, plays the rdlo of a 
suppressionist or a killer of tho potential being (Bhruiia) or a destroyer of the 
development of what is best and glorious in man. In this paper, we try to 
discuss this alleged position of tho Buddha. 

Gotama’s Primary Aim : 

Under the Bodhi Tree at Buddhagaya Gotama attained full enlightenment 
and succeeded in tracing the origin and cessation of the mass -of suffering. 
He solved the problem of suffering prevalent in this ■world and arrived at its 
solution. Secondly, ho found that his teachings in this case were recondite 
and unintelligible to the common run of people, who wore immersed in Tapha 
(Alaya). To such, his teachings of pacification of all Sanskaras, relinquish- 
ment of all limiting adjuncts, extinction of grasping deshe, desirelessness, 
cessation, Nibba^ia would be quite foreign and unheard of.^ He, however, 
threw open the gates of immortality at the request of Maha Brahma.* He 
taught a doctrine which constituted the subsidence of Egoism (Asmimana). 
While speaking with Upaka, the Ajivaka, he speaks of himself as emancipated 
by the extinction of grasping desire.® In his first sermon to the Eive Bhikkhus 
at Isipatana, Deer Park, he described two extremes — one of indulgence in 
sensual pleasures and the other of addiction to self-torture, and struck at the 
Golden Mean, which he rightly styles as the Majjluma Patipada, which endows 
one with eyes to see and makes one know, leads one to peace, insight,, enlighten- 
ment and Mbbana.^ Further, the spotless eye of truth is described as: 

1 Two points of bis main position are these : (i) x ***W^W t contingent 

existence by dependent origination, and (ii) 

fil^Tsf. Further the eye of Truth U fsTflUUUi admirably 

sums up thesie two points. What is subject to the condition of origination is subject to the 
con^Uon of cessation. Thus which is not subject to condition of origination is not subject to 
the condition of cessation— it is Vimokhha or VU (Kevatta 

' Sutta), i.e. Transcendent, Indnite, Luminant Viiihe^a, which is nothing but Nibbona. 

® ‘ wnm n u T dqj i ’ — p- 

3 Pali expression: P- i*" 

* The Sermon is known as the Tlw Pali Text in eattenso runs 

thus: — 

^ %'»> fiurat, ^*frf sr i ' 

I ^ WT’«f ^ 

I ^ipunn u«rnr%sT 


65 


DID THE BUDDHA KILL THE OHILD IN MAN (BHDNA) ? 

That \rhioli is subject to the condition of origination, is likeivise subject to the 
condition of cessation. Ho loiow that the world consisted of different Tn^T 1 ^^s 
and temperaments^ and to "suit this divergent world one uniform way would 
not do. Ho carried on tallis on preliminary subjects like charity, character, 
y heavens, evils of sensual pleasures, advantages of desirelessness and when with 
these talks the mind of the hearer was softened, elated and pleased, then alone, 
ho taught him the crux of his teachings — viz., the four Hoble Truths — suffering, 
origin of suffering, cessation of suffering and the path leading to the cessation 
of sufforing.2 Ho further interpreted the old notions, customs and associa- 
tions in the new light of his teachings and put in new life into the old and 
neglected and discredited things of the past.^ In all this, his ideal was to 
reform, reconstitute, replenish, interpret what was handed down and not to 
destroj*^ nor demolish it. Ho is Icnown as a great Religious Reformer and not a 
Prophet.^ He wanted to teach men how to live as human beings — ^in a 
dignified vray. Great stress is, therefore, laid in his scheme of teaching on 
ethics and psychology and less stress in laid on metaphysics and speculative 
pIxilosophy.B To illustrate this statement, Gotama used many parables and 
similes and one of these parables is knoum as ‘The parable of the cloth’.® We 
shall briefly indicate the parable. If a piece of cloth were to put on the dye 
well, it must first bo pure and clean, free from foulness and dirt. When the piece 
of cloth is thus rendered free from all stains, then it may put on any dye and 
^ come out with a good shining colour. There are similarly stains and impurities 
of the heart. There are avarice, malevolence, anger, malice, jealousy, envyj 
hypocracy, pride, arrogance, indolence and so forth. These impurities must 
first bo done away and when one succeeds in doing it, one entertains full and 
ulsting faith in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Samgha. This unflinching 

i 

Dovanagarl Edition, page 16. 

' snunngj^t I 

- For oxampio, quotes tho Pali Text in extenso. N<i7l — fJfiRfijaift' — 

Dovanagarl Edition, page 24, ‘ 

* For oxampio, fu«n^ ^ •TUfUrf^, ; fsrfV- 

iwui; (farming), ^ ? 

otc. • ^ 

4 cf. wrauT i Also ^rTuni, ^Rgrai^ uwuT I nunrai 

unftsft UKquWT B nunr?— Dovanapiri Edition (by Buddha Society), verse No. 276. 

6 Tho Paribbajakas asked him standardized questions: about the etemality or otherwise 
of tho world, post-mortom existence of the Tathagota, identity or otherwise of the Body or Life. 

‘ ' Also compare tho Brahmajola Sutta of tho Dlgha-nikaya, vol. I, wherein 62 heresies are detaded. 
Also all those thoorios about tho soul have boon styled by Gotama as: ff[f|jrci, 
f^ffqrrlK, r^rsPlUfiP ^, I » « of ®'o« Depravities or the 

Ssavas. Dovanagarl Edition by Bajvado and others, pap 4. 

0 Known as qiuqU’STT, constituting the Sutta No. 7 of tho — 

Dovanagarl Edition by Bajvado and others, pages 26-29. Only tho gist of this Sutta is given 
in tho body. Vido : pages 13—16. 

5 




66 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


faith enables one to renounce all selfishness and self-seeking and the attainment 
of the fruition of spiritual welfare and its caxises follow as a matter of course. 
Thus the heart goes on the forward march of gladness to zest, and thonco to 
tranquillity of body. With the latter enjoying tranquillity, a person experiences 
satisfaction, wherein is found the peace of one’s heart. This pitch of meri- 
torious states of consciousness once reached, one may not hurt or harm any 
one. The heart has undergone a process of purification, like gold or silver. 
With heart pure and mind steady, radiant thoughts of love, compassion, 
rejoicing and equibalance of mind pervade each of the four quarters and this 
proceeds triumphantly to embrace vast and boundless life, in which there is 
no hate nor ill-will. This state of mind paves the way for deliverance from 
bonds and cankers and depravities. Ho realizes that he has successfully lived 
the highest life and there is nothing more to attain for him. This is the 
true washing of the imier life and then nothing will purify him — since he is 
pmity itself ! This parable of the cloth admirably sums up the regular steps 
through which the Bhikldiu must pass to attain to the complete unfoldment 
and development of his personality. There is no destruction of being but 
the being is carried to the highest pitch of expansion and universality — to. 
the building up of a personality characterized by chastened thoughts, develop- 
ment of noble and generous and altruistic sentiments and emotions and com- 
plete absence of self-seeking. It is an identification of the personal and the 
Universal 1 


It may, on the other hand, be argued that this may bo all right for the 
Bhikkhu; but what teachings has Gotama to impart to lay persons, to family 
men and women, who have dealings with the world and to lead life in the world. 
To them, the ideas of the suffering and the noble truths would not at all help 
to live happily on this earth. For them Gotama has delivered exclusive 
sermoM and taught them their duties and responsibilities. To the Brahmin 
ouseholders of Pateligama he has brought home the advantages of a virtuous 
hte. A man of a strong rectitude acquires great wealth and. glory through 
ms untmng efforts, earns good reputation abroad, he enters into any society 
as cpnfident and self-possessed and when the inevitable death overtakes him 
He mes without anxiety and is bom in a noble state.i He has always 
emphasized on the necessity of. leading a good life. Again in his sermon to 
the Brahmm heads of families in the village of Sala (in Kosala) he clearly 

constitutes Righteous or ' Dhammacariya and 
fL ^ Adhammacariya. Recognizing three avenues of actions of 

e 0 y, speech and mind there are found three acts of the Body, four acts of 
speech and three acts of Mind : 

(i) Abstinence from killin g, from theft, and all sensual misconduct " 

Thes e constitute Righteous acts of the Body. 

Tilan is addressed to the Brahmin householders of Fataligama and occurs in n,n_ 

Siif**'* A. ’ ®*8l»-iiikaya, Vol. 11, Mahavagga (Vinaya Fitaka) and Udana. Wo hero quote 
Sutta from the Digha-nikaya. Vol. (No. 16)_Dev. Edition 

pages 69-71. A gwt of the Sutta is given in the body. 


DID THE BUDDHA KILL THE CHILD IK MAN (bHUKA) ? 67 

\ 

(ii) Refrain from deliberately lying or citing false testimony, &om 

indulging in slander and obstructing harmony and good-will, fi:om 
bitterness of tongue and ensure development of pleasantness and 
urbanity in speech, and from indulging in tattle and thereby 
cultivating a habit of spcalcing in season, illuminating and well- 
supported— These constitute Righteous acts of the Speech. 

(iii) Not anything to do with covetousness, malevolence or wickedness 

of thought and developing right outlook and correctness in 
conceptions — ^Thcse constitute Righteous acts of the Mind.^ 

Again, while speaking mth lay disciples, Gotama talked to them in terms 
of human aspirations, aims and ideals which make a man successful in life. 
Ho had a conversation with Mallika, the chief Queen of Pasenadi of.Kosala.* 
To a question from the Queen he answers how one obtains health, beauty and 
social position. The necessary qualifications are given as absence of violent 
nature, expression of anger, rage or hatred, a disposition to charity and 
munificence and rejoicing in the prosperity of others, or when they get 
honours. This development of nature qualifies one to naturally win the 
honours and blessings of worldly life. Further, Gotama taught men their 
duties as family men and the necessity of living a successful life in the midst 
of storms, worries and miseries of life. In a number of small Suttas, like the 
Maha Mangala Sutta, the Farabhava Sutta, the Vasala Sutta, the Vijaya Sutta 
and Sigala Sutta,* he has given such advice, diagnosed life of the world like 
a chemical analyser, pointed out pitfalls, and given his ideas of success in life. 
He has taught how to develop nature, how to form character and ensure 
fairness in dealings vith others, how to foster friendliness and fellow-feeling 
towards man and man, how to enlarge one’s outlook and broaden the vision 
by eschewing accidental circumstances or difference due to birth or family, 
how to purify and strengthen the avenues of actions and in general, how to 
create an atmosphere, in which ' being ’ in man should blossom forth and radiate 
its lustre and love, pleasing, comforting and holding out hope to all ! Thus in 
his scheme of life, whether intended for the homeless Bhikkhu or the house- 
holder, his sole aim seems to have been to add lustre, dignity and all com- 
prehensiveness to life and the child in man. 

Buddha’s ideas of Good and Evil used in the development of man : 

While consideruig the charge of Bhunahu, it is expedient to see how 
Gotama analysed the mind and its processes and formulated a scheme of 
Psychological Ethics with a view to build up a powerful personality and not 
to weaken or degenerate it. He discovered three Hetus or Causes of Raga or . 

1 (No. 41) — Bov. Edition by Kojvado and 
othorsi pages 193-196. In tho body, only a gist is givon. Tho opposite of those constitute 
the ‘Unrighteous Life*. 

2 Known os tho — ^Anguttora-nikoyo. Translated in ‘ Buddhism in Transla- 

tions*, by Warren — IV — 197 (P.T.S., pages 228-231). 

* All those oro from tlio Sutta Nipata, only tho last is in tho Digha-mkoyo, Vol. HE. 


68 


.B. C. LAW VOLUME 


Cupidity, Dosa or Malevolence and Moha or Infatuation or stupidity of 
mind; as also three opposite Hetus. By analysing human consciousness ho 
found it to consist of 89 types. He invented his theory of states 
of consciousness (DhammSp) and. grouped them under heads of 

Kusala .or Meritorious, Akusala or Demeritorious or Abyakata or Inter- 
mediate.!. He found the mind to be always carrying on a struggle 
between these three types of the Dhamma or states of consciousness. These 
further proved to be a feeder to the material form or Rupa, Sensations 
or Vedana, Perceptions or Sahna, Predispositions or Sankharas and-Xiife-con- 
fimiing contingent principle or Vinnana. Ho thus gave to the world his 
notion of Five Groups or Pancakkhandas, in which he admirably summed up 
‘sentient existence’. Happiness or suffering is caused by the operation of 
either the three Motives or springs of Action — ^Raga, Dosa and Moha or A-raga, 
A-dosa and A-moha. The first group causing demeritorious states of conscious- 
ness and causing suffering, while the other group causing meritorious states of 
consciousness and producing happiness. Thus by analysing the mental 
phenomena, Gotama taught man to struggle on towards perfection of the 
child-man by eliminating the demeritorious states of consciousness and placing 
instead meritorious states of consciousness, 2 so that good thoughts alone may 
be the permanent feature or character of man and consequently his actions 
through the avenues should turn out to be only good and not evil. To achieve 
this end he prescribed various methods, which are well defined in the Nikayas. ^ 
In giving to the world his ideas of Sentient Existence, Gotama introduced the 
truth that our life is in a continual state of flux or becoming and this pereimial 
change, being the essential characteristic of life there is nothin g everlasting or 
permanent like the Sovlpv the Atman.^ This, however, produced the greatest 
misunderstanding about him: that he was the Teacher of tho- Annihil ation of 
man (TJcchedavadi). He kiUed the soul in man. But the fact that Gotama 
accepted the Law of Kamma should have been an eye-opener to those who 
levelled this charge against him. Gotama distinctly states that none can 
destroy one’s kamma or the fruit of good or bad deeds of life. None can 
escape this tribunal. Gotama thus admitted abiding and lasting in man and, 
at the same time, accepted progression in life. Life means going from lower 


1 Compare the Sbammasaipgani — First page. Devanagari Edition (Bh.O. Series, No. 2)— 
by Sapat and Vadekar, 1940. 

^ The struggle for the production of good thoughts and the destruction of evil thoughts 
is kno^ in Pali as Four Bight Efforts. The original Text reads thus;— 


'awiiiK vtiTOTsf I vrww vTvrot 1 

fiuu'WTVra The — 

Burmese Edition — Hanthavaddy Press; — — Section No. 343, 
page 78. “ 

® All this Physical and Mental Existence, which Gotama Buddha analysed, was traced to 
It is this contingent existence that it is examined in the li^t 
■of the Three Characteristics of Aniccs or impermanence, Dukkba or suffering and Anatta or 
essencelessness or absence of Atman. This Anatmata is, in other words, the theory of Dhatn- 
mas, which are characterized by the absence of any character of true Beality- Beyond this 
ho has «o{ explained, but left it Abyakata or unexplained. 




69 


DID THE BUDDHA KILL THE CHILD IN MAN (BHDNA) ? 

to high, high to higher, and higher to the highest and thence to the tran- 
scendental. Man thus has ample scope for expansion and development and 
through this limited region, the unsubstantial character of which is to be first 
realized by amcca, dukkha and anatta, we pass into to the causeless, uncondi~ 
tioned and illimitable liberation (Vimokkha), which is and to be realized by 
experience.! He thus admits the existence of what he calls as the Nibbana. 
]ii this connection reference has already been made to the Nirodha or cessation 
{vide: Gotama*s Primary Aim). This cessation has been misunderstood 
and coupled as it is along with the Nibbana, it has been argued that 
the Nibbana too is a negative ideal and it stands for ‘Nothingness’ — ^it is 
‘Annihilation of Self’. In the famous formula of the Dependent Origination 
(Paticca-Samuppada), the Vinnana gives rise to Nama-rupa or Name 
Form and with the cessation of this Vinnana, there is cessation of 
Nama-rupa. The conception of Dhamma or states of consciousness is 
introduced as contradistinguished from that the Dhammadhatu or the 
Nibbanadhatu.3 The latter is a radiant universal Vinna na as opposed 
to the Vinnanakkhanda of the Five Groups. Both consist of the 
Vixinana-essence ; but while one is identical with the radiant universally pure 
Vifiiiana (Pabhassara-citta), the other is the starting point of the cosmic 
evolution of the Dhatus and is the Kilittha-citta, appearing in connection with 
the sensuous shape on the plane of Nama-rupa, its essence as principle of 
impermanence being manifested in the Pratiyasamutpada. In the Keva^ta 
Sutta of the Digha-nikaya ^ Gotama has given a real picture of the Nibbapa 
by the introduction of Vififiana. ‘In tiiis ancient Buddhist Vijnanavada, the 
quality and position of the radiant Vijnana was not that of a permanent element 
within the impermanent structure of things, i.e. within namarupa, or even 
that of the pure nama-dharma, but that of the transcendent infinite Vijn^a, 

1 G?ho verso from the Dhommapada roods thus; . 

UfSHHf ^ II Arhont Vogga (No. 7), verse No. 92. 

It is in fact attributeless existence, wluoh we have in another place shown to be * transcen- 
dental sliining Vinnupa’ . 

" I am greatly indebted to the work, entitled ‘Nama-Bupa and Dharma-Bupa ’, by 
Dr. (Miss) Moryla Falk, D.Litt., and published by the University of Calcutta (1943). The author 
has treated the subject of the Nibbana in relation to the main position of the Uponisliadic thought. ' 
I have freely drawn upon this work in dealing with this question of the Nibbana and in the 
body of this paper I have given the number of page of the work which I have either quoted 
or drawn upon the pliraseology in course of the treatment of this subject. 

8 (No. 12) MTJft)— DevouBgorl Edition (Bombay University, 

1942), page 260. Gotama asks the Bhilddiu to rc-sfofe the question, for the solution of which 
he had wandered among gods and heavens, thus; 

^ ■g' varfl sr smrfH i ^ ^ ^ i ^ sthtb 

II 

The answer to tliis corrected question is as follows; — 

"qisrsB u^eft w i vki ^ sr jitvIh n vsj ftwe 

<^11} VRT ^Hi^ l.. vw 1 fsnCltrsr 




70 


B. 0. law 'VOLUME 


where contingent nalma as well as rupa have ceased to exist . . . The immobiliza- 
tion of Vifina^a (Vinfianassa nirodhena) is the transformation of the con- 
sciousness stream into the* transcendent, radiant, umversal Vififiana. Here 
the implication that the four elements as constituting rupa have their foothold 
in the -individual nama (but) they have no foothold whatsoever in the 
rmdifferentiated transcendent Vijnana (pages 68-69).^ Thus Gotama accepted 
the existence of .the Nibbana as a transcendent reality comparable to the 
immeasurable Great Ocean in which *the manifold streams of name and form 
cease to exist’. The impermanent, suffering and essenceless test concerns the 
whole range of the notion of eontii^ent really both in its sensuous and uh- 
sensuous aspects.* The DhammS or states of consciousness were the elements 
of manifold experience constituting contingent existence as opposed to the 
unique ecstatic universal experience constituting the transcendent reality 
(Dhamma) (page 63). Again on the Sutta of the ‘Noble Quest’, Gotama 
distinguishes that quest as noble, which aims at reaching the Nibba^a, which 
is self-existent, without decay, transcendental and incomparable security.* 
Other epithets of the Nibbana as uncreated (Akata), ineffable, peaceful, from 
which there is no coming back, point to its unique character of its being really — 
existent. This hope, this ideal, as real as the Upanishadic ideal of the Brahman, 
this summum bonum of life creates in man an urge and a goad to act and to 
move. The child in man is thus urged on to struggle and to attain what is 
real, existing and where all disharmony ends in harmony, incompleteness in 
completeness, imperfection in perfection, and emptiness in fullness. IPurther, 
this is not a mere phantasy of the brain, not hallucination, not an imaginary 
satisfaction nor a mere hope. Those Bhikkhus ?.nd Bhikkhunis, who have 
realized it, have recorded their experiences in those outpourings of hearts, 
constituting the Theragatha and the Therigatha.* Gotama did not preach 
them the doctrine of Annihilation (uochedavada). He taught them that 
there was other existence, richer, fidler, and imiversal. There was always 
operative in this world the law of cause and effect, the law df Eamma, the 
existence and persistence of Kamma; that the centre of self-consciousness must 
yield to universal consciousness and that though suffering be the law of the 
world and the body be the evil, still, out of this body, the hope and redemption 

^ This 'which is transcendeiital and Bhining cotre^onds to the (nncon- 

ditioned fieedom). 

* Of. ^ gsc|#*ii vuiT tnftuvr \ w<j^vorse ii. 

® — Devanggaii Edition by Bajvade and 

others (1919), pages 116-116. The original Pali words are ) 

* Bead, for example, the follo'wing: ‘Very many of the Theris-were no doubt women of 

acknowledged culture and they did preach as teachers of men and did expound oh various ooca- 
sions the essential and subtler facts of human life and experience ... we see in these verses 
the expressions and energies and emotions, newly awakened or diverted into new channels. 
(Befer to the Devanagatl Edition of the Bombay University, pages ii and iii). 

Also compare the foUowing verses from the Dhammapada;— 

’TO i 

D — Verse Eo. 197, as also the next three verses. 


71 


I 

DID THE BDDDHA KILL THE CHILD IN MAN (b'HD^TA) ? 

of humanity will emerge as a certainty. The Bhikkhus ought not to commit 
suicide nor put an end to their life.i They must purify this body, cultivate 
this body, keep this body hygienically pure, properly dress it, and leam to 
behave decentl}^ and with dignity with others. In thought, in deed and in 
action they must be perfectly tolerant, considerate, sympathetic, serviceable 
and self-sacrificing. The tiirbifience of spirit, unruly behaviour, want of 
manners, not to show proper distance towards elders, display of licentious 
conduct, immoderation in food, absent-mindedness, sloth and torpor, stupidity 
and inaction and want of tmderstanding — these were strongly condemned.^ 
Gotama trained his disciples, removed their wildness and boorishness, intro- 
duced discipline, encouraged fellow-feeling and mutual understanding, built up 
moral and emotional nature, and thus strengthened, purified and developed 
their powers and intellect. Thus he built up the child in man on surer founda- 
tions of character, mental oultiuD and knowledge.^ 

Charge of Repression of Instincts and Emotions : 

Before we finish this paper, it is necessary to deal with the following 
charges brought against Gotama: Firstly, the ‘Method of Analysis’ which 
Gotama employed in the solution of the problem of suffering had the conse- 
quence of ‘arousing disgust’ against other emotions and instincts, which 
are of more abiding value for the religious life’. Secondly, ‘this Method of 
Analysis destroys all it touches ’ ; 'and is it not better to sublimate the instincts 

and emotions than to repress them ? The instinct of cinriosity and the 

emotion of wonder are of greater worth to religion and to morality than the 
instinct of repulsion and the emotion of disgust’ (p. 98). Thirdly, ‘it is surely 
a radical fault in the method .of Gotama as teacher that he dealt too summarily 
with the natural and primary instincts and* emotions, which a great teacher 
must and not repress’.* 

In the proceeding treatment, a reply to these charges will be easily dis- 
covered, but we shall further pursue these charges and try to meet them. 
In tlie first place, the ‘Method of Analysis’, which Gotama applied, is the most 
effective and scientific method of the modem times. To remove the fear, 
obsession, helplessness and the consequential pessimistic outlook of life, 
Gotama analysed the suffering itself and found therein nothing but a 
‘ bundle of categories ’ and contingent existence that come together and that, 
therefore, could be destroyed. Gotama thus created a feeling of confidence 

1 MiUndu Pnfiha — ^Dovanagorl Edition (Bombay University) — by Vodekai*— pages 194-195 

WVTR translation from 'Buddhism in Translations’ 

by Warren, pages 436-440. ' 

2 Compare the jjf^r^rfSr UW (No. 69) of the Devanagari 

Edition (Bombay University), pages 139-144. ' In foot, Gotoma’s Bhikkhus ond Bhikkhunis 
.\rero always clioraoterized by neatness, deoenoy, outward form or deportment, sweetness 
and affability of nature, compassionate heart, and may be compared to the Catholic Fathers 
ond Mothers of the Cliristian ^urch, which came into existence 600 years after Gotama. 

3 Known as umfif “d 

'« ‘Gotama Buddha* by E. J. Saunders (The Heritage of India Series), Chapter Vn, 'Gotama 
OB a Teacher’. Tlio above quotations are from this chapter. 



72 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


amongst his hearers. ' He first softened, .elated, enoonraged and pleased the 
minrla of his hearers^ and then he taught them the crux of his teachings— 
the four Noble Truths. Gotama resorted to this Analytical Method so that 
he could afterwards impress upon them the synthesis of Life. Having proved 
that theFive Attachment Groups (upadana khandhas) constituted the suffering, 
he farther showed how they can he sublimated by the detachment of Upadana. 
Being concerned with ‘suffering’, he had to develop softer instincts and emo- 
tions like compassion, sympathy, fellow-feeling, consideration, encouragement, 
tendency to isolate with a view to finally join. He taught the value of peace, 
composure, placidity, freedom from flirtation, worry and restlessness, removal 
of the turbidity of surging waves of blind love or lust, and the necessity of 
clarity of vision, birth of understanding, development and expansion of outlook 
and dropping off the curtain of ignorance, impulsiveness and momentary 
clouding of the reason. He did succeed in doing tliis and it can be proved 
by a number of stories from the Thera and the Theiigatha or the Dhammapada 
Atthakatha. What were the circumstances in which those men and women of 
the world approached him ? They were like ‘unhappy incidents of the worldly 
life, like the death of an only child, widowhood, disappointment or a rude shock 
received by the conduct of the husband or one’s children, disgust, degradation 
or demoralization in the domestic condition, or such tmusual incident in the 
walk of life ’.2 What did Gotama do % He was filled with Metta and Karun& 
(Love and Compassion) for them. His magnetic Personality combined with 
the affability of temper immediately produced assurance and comfort into the 
hearts of lady visitors. He proved to them the futility of grief, operation of 
the inexorable Law of Cause and Effect and wide universality of the suffering 
and thus succeeded in removing the poignancy, intensity, tmbidity of their 
emotions.3 To KisS Gotami (No. 63) or to Ubbiri (No. 31) or Sopa (No. 46) 
or Patacara (No. 47) or to Canda (No. 49) or to Vasitthi (No. 51) — ^majority 
of whom suffered from the shook of personal loss — he used the Method of 
Analysis to show that the subject of their bitter lamentation was nothing but 
a bundle of Five Groups and thus the dawn of reason made them pause 
and think. Gotama did not arouse disgust, but aroused their ‘ faculty of thinking ’ 
and awakened their reason. They found that Law of Death was not res- 
tricted to them, but was of general application. Thus Gotama tried to remove 
the narrowness of instincts or emotions and substitute universality of outlook 
and consequently, the universality of their feelings and emotions. They 
put off their personality and entered into relations with the universe on the 


1 The Tisual phrase is ' 

® Compare the ‘Preface’ to the TherigathU, Dev. Edition -(Bombay University), page vii. 
The numbers and names mentioned above in the body are fcom the Therigatba. ' 

* Having thus removed the outer or surface disturbance of the flurry and turbulence of the 
mind, Gotama succeeded in implanting and stabilizing -what Mr. Saunders calls ‘the natural 
and primary instincts and emotions, but now disrobed of all their wildness and narrowness. 
T^eir love for the world was no longer that of a child’s curiosity and wonder, but understand- 
mg and satisfaction of curioraty — elements whose importance in religion and morality cannot be 
underestimated’. 


73 


DID THE BITDDHA HILL THE CHILD IN MAN (BETT]<rA) 1 

strength of chastened, broadened, and universalized properties of the mind 
(cetasika) and the Brahmaviharas or exalted states. They chastened their 
pride by humility, resentment by forgiveness, narrow love of kmRTTm.Ti to 
universal benevolence and family life to the selfless and impersonal brother- 
hood.^ With this new implication and interpretation of life and universalized 
vision, they found themselves in a. new world of action and active piety as 
messengers of hope and consolation. They were not disgusted with the world, 
nor did they abhor the world, but they entered the world with these mib- 
limateA feelings^ and reclaimed many souls like the Theiis Ambapali, the 
Ganilm, Addliakasi or Vimala (both harlots) and the Theras, like Au gnliTnala , 
the Highwayman, Sumta, the Sweeper, Upali, the Barber. All these souls 
were reclaimed not by physical force, not by rod or sword, but out of bound- 
less love for them. The two or three examples which Mr. Satmders has cited 
on pages 95-97 of his book and especially about the loathsomeness 
and the foulness of the Body as evinced in Cemeteries (Sivathikas).® 
They are intended as a discipline to a person, Vho has been indulging 
in the pleasures of the Flesh. This discipline by imderstanding the 
unsubstantial natmn of the Body is meant not for all but for those who 
have to bring their mind under control. Such disciplinary practices are 
foimd even among the Christian Fathers, who know that ‘the Body is 
the Temple of the Holy Spirit’ (page 98). Why, many a time the 
body used to be whipped and it was necessary for disciplining it. Gotama 
taught the Asubha Bhavana or realizing the foulness of the Body to remove 
the influx of undesirable tendencies of lust or sensual thoughts, thoughts of 
envy or malice or vengeance, or thoughts of egoism or pride. There also the 
doors of the senses or five sense organs were not closed to the natural and 
primary instincts and emotions, but they were guarded.^ Gotama did want 
his Bhikkhus to see, hear, smell, taste and feel the touch and entertain good 
thoughts (Dhamma), but only do it in such a way as to shut out the demeri- 
torious states of consciousness (Akusala Dhamma) and entertain, foster, 
develop and expand only the meritorious states of consciousness (Kusala 
Dhamma). In the note on the Sammappadhana or Eight Exertions 
it has been shown that Gotama abhorred vacuum in the mind' and 
hence the gap, caused by the destruction of the demeritorious states, was 
to be filled up by good ones and thus the mind was to be completely 
filled by meritorious states of consciousness.® They are visible in 

1 ‘Patna University Beadership Lectures’ (1024-1926), by self, pages 32-33. (Published 
1929.) 

2 We would prefer the term ‘chastened’ to ‘sublimated’. 

3 Buddhaghosa has, in his Visuddhimagga, devoted one complete ehapter to this form of 
disciplining and drilling the body. Tliis, however, was not meant for all B hikkhu s. 

* The Pali word is Compare the following: — 

(Sk. covered) H t PlUlrmftarei ST ftPff— 

Edition by sdf, page 6. 

6 The idea was that the mind to bo so broadened and oscpanded as to include the universe. 
It is comparable to the four elements, which cover all space. In the (No. 62) 



74 


B. 0. IiAW VOLUME 


Twenty-five Cetasikas or mental properties of the type of moral 
beautv.^ They sum up the perfect development of the moral and emotional 
nature of Man. The Bhikkhus or the Bhikkhupis of Gotama were not at all 
adversely affected by the teachmgs of Gotama, especially in the matter of 
controlling and restraining the sense organs, but they were fully appreciative 
of what is grand, sublime and beautiful in Nature. The Buddhist Bhikkhus 
and Bhikkhunis found the grand scenes of Nature like mountains, rivers, 
trees, peacocks, clouds, mountains, dens or dales helpful to their mental 
development and abstract meditation. In the Theragatha the Bhikkhus 
have sung the glory of natural phenomena * thus showing that they were 
keen admirers and appreoiators of what is sublime and beautiful in Nature. 
Their hkmg and a sense of perception of the beautiftil and the consequent 
development of nobler feelings and emotions is a direct repudiation of 
Mr. Saunder’s statement, which we have noted as the third charge. The 
Buddhists were the first people to apply art for religious purposes. ‘Buddhist 
Art’ has been a subject of wonder and admiration to the artist, the archaeo- 
logist and the antiquarian. If Gotama’s teachings had resulted in repressing 
the natural instincts of man, the glories of Sanchi, Barhut, Ajanta and 
Ellora and Amaravati, with their paintings and sculpture, the Toranas and 
gateways, their carvings and history in stone, the most artistic figures with 
eloquent expression and faultless symmetry— all these give a direct lie to this 
unwarranted statement. Again, AnSthpigidika’s Arama, King Bimbisara’s 
Veluvana, Migaramata’s Pasada (Mansion), Ambapali’s gift of a Vihara — all 
these bear testimony to the development of generous instincts and sentiments 
in the hearts of the Upasakas and Upasikas, men and women of the world. 
Lastly, the fuller and richer perfection and culmination of these nobler and 
generous instincts, sentiments and emotions is to be traced to the later ideal 
of the Bodhisatta. In tracing the gradual development of thought and 
teachings of the Buddha, we find it passing from the intellectual (Arhatship) 
to the emotional (Bodhisatta), from the prosaic and dry to the religious and 
the mystic. Gotama’s call to the Bhikkhus to wander over the face of the earth 
in the interests of the masses (Bahujana) ® found its culmination in the 
Bodhisattva Ideal. The Bodhisatta, though be was on the road to Buddhaship, 
exerts himself not four his own good or salvation but for the good of others; 

of the Gotama exhorts '<TS<d thus, UraW 

wwivms WRsi Meritorious states of consciousness to cover 

the internal and external existence of the Bhikkhu. This was to be in fact the Quantum of 
his Personality. 

Patna TTniveraty Headership Lectures’— Chart to face page 128 — they are-known as 

* ^Dovanagari Edition (Bombay University), Appendix: (Nature 

descriptions). 

— :(^) tTfl^'ilt^-r-Uevandgaif Edition (Bombay Univorsity)^ 
page 31.-^,;qf^ . MMaiW-BWR 



man’s BEASON and his QT7EST OF TRUTH, GOOD AND BBAUTT 76 

SO great is his sympathy and compassion for them. He refuses the attain- 
ment of the Hibbana tmtil his fellow-beings have also secured their freedom.^ 
Such is his boundless love for creation. In the Bodhisatta, there is develop- 
ment par excellence of the ten cardinal virtues or Paramitas.^ Says the 
Bodhisatta, ‘Just as elements beginning with' Earth serve in various wa3r8 
beings, residing under the widest space, even so should I, residing under the 
canopy of the sky, serve them as long as all of them have not attained bjUss.’ 

Condimon : 

It will thus be clear that Gotama’s teachings did not tend to kill the 
‘Child in Man ’ but rather helped to build it up for the altruistic ideal of serving 
others even at the sacrifice of personal interest. Those teachiugs were in- 
tended to add lustre to personality by making it more dignified and supreme. 
Gotama laid down a scheme of life both for the Laity and the Bhikkhu, which 
would make them reformed, would vastty improve their potential strength, 
would increase their scope and extent of action from self-seeking to altruism, 
would create out of them a dynamic reality, untrameUed by nothing, free, 
fearless and invincible, chastened in speech, body and mmd and shining 
gloriously to emanate its energizing rays to revivify and rejuvenate the world ! 
History bears ample witness to this grand consummation I 


MAN’S REASON AND HIS QUEST OF TRUTH, GOOD AND BEAUTY 

-By 

Mb. Ohabu Chandra Dutt, I.C.S. (Retd.) 

The biologist tells us that the life of every animal is an effort to survive 
and to make a place for itself on the earth. The animal seeks to make room 
not only for itself individually, but also collectively for its family or its group 
as in a beehive or in an ant-hill or in a beaver colony. This constitutes the whole 
life of the lower animal. No doubt the same impulse has swayed man as well, 
but it accounts for only a small portion of his activities. For the rest he has 
been guided largely by his mind and intellect. He is pre-eminently the mental 
being, the animal that thinks and reasons. Tliis is not the place to trace 
- man’s evolutionary history. Nor is it necessary to do so. Every thinking 
man of today knows how in the primaeval matter, apparently inert and 
inconscient, the dormant life-force woke up, how in the subconscient living 
being a consciousness and a mind emerged, how that primitive mind gradually, 
through millemiiums, evolved into a rational intellect. Man has, by exercising 
this new-born faculty of his, learnt not only to control the forces of nature 
but also to build up vast organizations and fulfil his life individually and 

r 'Fatna University Beadorship Lectures’, page 213. 

^ The Ten Poramitas are: 

w, ^ and | 


76 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


collectively — ^fulfil, not like his animal predecessors only vitally and physically, 
but on a higher plane, mentally and rationally. He has today become an 
expert in both curing and killing, feeding and starving, educating and enslaving 
his fellow-men, and he is clever enough to justify every thing that he does. 
But surely, this miserable state cannot be the ultimate aim of human evolution, 
the end of Nature’s long travail. A greater harmony must be achieved between 
our intelligent will and the Truth and Light that lie dormant in us and of which 
we have had but fleeting glimpses. This is the high miracle for which the 
world is waiting. Tn the Master’s words, 

‘The animal is a living laboratory in which nature has, it is said, worked 
out man. Man himself may well be a thinking living laboratory in whom 
and with whose conscious co-operation she wills to work out the super-man, 
the god, or shall we say rather, the manifest God ! ’ 

Life-energy dormant in mat^ has emerged as a thinking and mentally 
conscious life. But involved in mind, and therefore in life and body too, 
there is a stfll higher faculty, a super-mind, ruler of the other three, which 
must also wake up in due time and take charge of man’s onward march. Man 
is destined to transcend his half-lit mind in order to realise his highest and his 
earliest aspiration. There is abundant evidence to show that with the first 
dawn of knowledge man started in quest of Truth, Perfection, BUss and a 
secret Immortality. Periods of doubt and dif&dence have ho doubt inter- 
vened, but he has always come back to this original pursuit. What then is 
man’s true goal 1 What must he do to perfect himself ? He must harmonise 
his inner with his outer self. He must discover the divine Reality and 
realise the ideal and complete Person within himself, and then in the light of 
his discovery and of his realisation shape his' whole outer life. 

Since this is man’s true nature, neither the ancient Greek ideal nor the 
modem European ideal can lead him to the highest or the widest goal of his 
collective progress. The Hellenic mind was ‘philosophic, aesthetic and 
political’ ; the modem mind lays but little stress on trae beauty, it is principally 
‘scientific, economic and utilitarian". Both take it that man is a mental 
animal, that the mentalised physical life is his field and that the rational 
intellect is his highest faculty. ' But we see already in the present subjective 
age a tendency towards an ancient trath and ideal. Followed to its end, 
this tendency will lead man to the realisation that he is, in trath, a developing 
soul seeking to fulfil himself in the three lower terms of his existence — ^mind, 
life and body. It is a spiritual and not a inentalised physical life that is his 
goal. At the end of liis long travail towards a perfect culture and a rational 
society there looms man’s ancient spiritual idea of a kingdom of Heaven on 
earth. We shall perceive before us the ideal of a self-illumined, self-possessing 
and self-mastering soul in a pure and perfect mind and body.’ 

The^ spirit then and not the rational intellect is man’s sovereign faculty, 
eason is an insufficient light to guide us to our hi gh end. In our daily life 
wo arc content to be led by our intelligent will, but to achieve our trae aim 
no must entrust ourselves to a higher knowledge and will, and set free our 



77 


man's BBASON and his QITNSI? OB TRUTH, GOOD AND BEAUTY 

dormant soul-faonlties. Thns alone shall we integrally unfold the divine 
within us in our individual soul and in our collective life. Else we may simply 
revert to the old idea of a spiritualised typal society, such as was the basis 
of the ancient Indian culture. The principal feature of that culture was what 
is called the caste system, that is to say the division of the whole community 
into four types, which were elastic enough at the start but which culminated 
by convention into four rigid divisions. The whole system was challenged 
from time to time by various religious movements, small and great, that took 
their stand on rationalism. But what we should remember in this connection 
is that ‘the typal principle is not that of the ideal human society’. Even 
according to the Indian theory it does not belong to the period of man’s highest 
development, when he had realised his <Bviue possibility — ^the Satya Yuga, 
the age of perfect Truth. Nor does it belong to the period of crude disorder, 
when man has sunk back towards the life of instincts, impulses and desires — 
the Kali Yuga. It is rather the principle of the ages in between — ^the Treta 
and the Dvapara — ^when man sought to maintain some form of his Dharma — 
in Treta by law, in Dvapara by fixed convention. The law of the age of Truth 
can be realised only by the gradual awakening of the divine power and 
knowledge in us. 

Our intelligence is a mediator between the in&a-rational and the supra- 
rational in us. The former is the animal part of om: nature consisting in the 
main of our instincts and impulses, and of the obscirre haphazard intuitions 
of our lower mind and will. It is struggling to be clear and precise but cannot 
succeed owing to an innate ignorance. It is the business of our intellect to 
enlighten it, to classify and organise its impulses and intuitions, and to help 
it along towards the definition it has been groping after. The supra-rational 
is the spiritual side of our nature which sees by its own light the Infinite in 
the finite, the One in the many, the Absolute in the relative. Our human 
intelligence looks up towards the One, the Infinite and the Absolute, but only 
with a sort of remote understanding, and is unable to seize its truth. The 
three powers of being are coexistent in all our activities.* It is only when the 
spiritual in us takes up the lead that we are able to transcend all limitation 
and realise the ultimate Beality. 

How limited the scope of reason is, becomes strikingly clear when we 
come to that large range of human experiences which constitutes man’s religious 
life. To begin with, the very words of the religious being are unintelligible 
to the man of reason. BHt the difficulty is not of language alone. The spirit 
and mood of religious thought and action are equally foreign to him; it is to 
in'm a strange life that the man of religion leads. The rational being may 
take the trouble of learning the native’s tongue, but he must also largely 
shed his own peculiar ways of thought before he can expect to understand 
the native. Otherwise, when he fancies himself an adept at imderstanding 
the native tongue and goes on to express his own views regarding the native 
the situation is apt to be one of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. 
To the man of ^iritual experience the intelligent man’s learned woids sound 



78 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


like the babble of a child trying to describe the ways of the adult. At the 
best, a rational explanation of a spiritual experience is superficial, and relates 
more or less to the externals. The attitude of reason face to face with religion 
is likely to be shallow and presumptuous. Either it looks upon religion as 
pure nonsense, a mass of superstitions, a smrvival of barbarism, or it proceeds 
to analyse religion as an affair of the mind and seeks to correct it. Often in a 
lofty patronising maimer it concedes that religion is not without its uses for the 
uplift of the ignorant lower classes. But this is not half as bad as when the 
intellect proceeds to formulate that wonderful thing, a rational religion — ^whioh 
is as ridiculous as trying to find out a body’s weight with a tape or its length 
with a pair of scales. It must not, however, be lost sight of that the critical 
attitude of the intellect towards religion has been quite usefol to man’s 
progress — ^nay, even to religion itself. To deny religion altogether is senseless 
as fa ATI has begun to find out already. It is very much like the foreigner 
considering the native’s ways to be absurd and untenable simply because they 
are not his own. The extreme rationalist calls upon the religious man to 
satisfy him by adducing material proofs. The difficulty, however, arises mainly 
&om the reason’s proneness to judge every thing by its externals much as a 
superior foreigner tries to judge a native civilisation by the dress and habits 
of the native. Intellectuals of a gentler persuasion have attempted to &ame 
a comparative science of religion, a pseudo-scientific anomaly on the face of it. 
These mild condonations of religion have fortunately never lasted long. Like- 
wise the benevolent attempts at erecting a rational religion have failed to 
convince anybody and have left no permanent effect on human thought. 

The reason is obvious. The aim of religion is to seek and find God, to 
know and realise Him in one’s own self and in every other self. To know 
Him is to adore Him. To adore Him is not only to climb up to TTim but also 
to bring Him down in all love and devotion into our earthly life in order to 
transform it, to divinise it. All this has nothing to do with reasoning. The 
God-seeker does not look for proofs of His existence. He requires none. TTis 
intimate experiences do not proceed by scientific experiments or philosophical 
t hinkin g. There are indeed some kinds of religious discipline which outwardly 
resemble scientific experimentation, but these are in fact no more than mere 
verification of realisations that have come by revelation and intuition from 
above. The love of God, the delight in God, the surrender to God, these 
are all beyond rational limitation. In the Master’s words, ‘wherever religion 
really finds itself ... its way is absolute and its firuits are ineffable ’. 

Has reason then no part to play in matters religious ? Yes, it has, 
but quite a secondary part. It can interpret the realisations of the spirit 
m its own language to the man of intellect. Just at the present juncture 
in human history this is an important fiinction. Man seems to have got 
tired of his intellectual wanderings and has begun to look inwards in se^ch 
.of a higher truth. But even in this search the scope of religious philosophy 
18 very limited. True knowledge it cannot give. It can only lead the 


THIAS’S BEASON AND HIS QHBST dP TKUTH, GOOD AND BEAUTY 79 

intelleci up to a certain point and then ask it to seek this true knowledge by 
subtler means that are beyond its own province. 

There is however another level of man’s spiritual life where the intellect 
can do a certain amount of independent and legitimate work. We have 
already referred to man’s in&a>rational life — his life of instincts, impulses 
and crude emotions — where his aspiration towards Truth had its first be^n- 
nings; much impurity, ignorance and superstition marked tliis stage of.liis 
seeking. It would seem that reason has a legitimate function to exercise 
here in bringing light and purity into the muddy current of man’s instinctive 
life. Beason has imdoubtedly been able to do some work in this direction ; 
but only to a limited extent, because the whole urge of the religious being 
is to transcend the semi-obscurity of the intellect and soar into the full light 
of the higher regions. 

nationalism has also done much useful work where rohgious systems 
have in course of time sufiFered decay, where ignorance and corruption have 
crept into man’s religious thought and practice. But here, too, there have 
been inevitable limitations. Often the intellect has applied the broom so 
freely that a great deal of what was true and beautiful has been swept away 
along with the rubbish. Moreover, a religious reform is seldom entirely 
rational; it is more often a replacement of one set of beliefs by another, the 
latter set more fanatical than the former. The Puritanic reformation in 
Europe, for instance, met with such tremendous success not because it had 
like the Benaissance movement a rational outlook but because it had in it a 
great measure of faith and fervour which was largely supra-rational in 
character. As the Master says, ‘If reason is to play any part, it must bo an 
intuitive rather than an intellectual reason, touched always by spiritual 
intensity and insight ’. 

The spirit and the reason need not be hostile. What man needs is 
‘reason lifted beyond itself by the power of the spirit ’, Then and there only, 
can it help man to attain to the supremo Truth. 

Religion, which is the quest of a Truth beyond reason, may well bo 
outside the scope of the rational intellect. But it is urged that m all other 
spheres of human thought and action reason is the sovereign guide. Even 
this, however, does not prove to be all true. The rational inteUeot, no doubt, 
holds a prominent place in science and philosophy and in matters practical. 
Prominent, that is all. In fact wo find that in all things, theoretical as well as 
practical, it holds but a middle position, between the two faculties infra- 
rational and supra-rational. Its function is, on the one hand, to correct the 
lower instinct and impulses, and, on the other, to prepare the way for the 
advent of the ^irit. 

This is especially clear in regard to man’s search for Beauty and his' search 
for Good. Let us examine firet man’s fimotions fiom the aesthetic point of 
view. It is indeed in the great creative arts— poetry, music, painting, sculpture 
and architecture — ^that his quest of the beautiful finds its most satisfying 
expression. But taking a wider view it is obvious that the perfect individual 



80 


B. C. LA.W VOLUME 


in a perfect community must see beauty more comprehensively. He must 
Tnn-t-A his whole life and being beautifiil. This quest, clearly, is not rational 
in its origin. The Master says, ‘It springs from the roots of our life, it is an 
instinct g-rifl an impulse, and instinct of aesthetic satisfaction and an impulse 
of aesthetic creation and enjoyment ’. We see its beginnings in the beauty 
of the beehive and the swallow’s nest. We see it blossoming in the caves of 
the prehistoric man. The beautiful drawings in the Altamira cave and 
the lovely carvings on horn in the Magdalian period show that man was 
seeking aesthetic satisfaction long before he learnt the useful arts of building 
houses, of weaving cloths or of forging metal implements. But at that stage 
his seeking was crude and defective. It was necessary for his progress 
that a higher power should awaken and take up the task of enlightening 
and correcting his crude infra-rational efforts, should lay down laws, and by 
improving his taste purify both his creative and appreciative faculties. It 
may be luged that man’s intellect was thus installed as the final judge of his 
artistic instincts. But a little thinldng would convince us that this was 
only a middle stage in his aesthetic evolution. No great work of art — 
poetry or music or paintmg — can fall within the sphere of rationalism. 
‘The intellect is not the poet, the artist, the creator in us.’ Creation is the 
work of a light and inspiration from above. It may call in the intellect for 
some of its operations as an employee but never as a master. If artistic 
inspiration submits to the control of reason, the quality of the work produced 
suffers materially. A picture or sculpture that has come down to the 
intellectual level may be very clever, very good, but never the work of genius. 
Genius is always supra-rational. What we know to be talent is seldom so. 
Rational formulation is but a mechanical process. When genius submits to 
this process and its canons, it constructs but does not create. The technique 
may be perfect but the soul is lacking. These facts are almost axiomatic as 
every artist knows in his own mind. 

There have been periods in the history of human development when the 
rational has been the prevailing influence in art — periods of great aesthetic 
activity but devoid of any inspiration. The talented artist has been very 
prominent during these periods. His aim was not so much ‘the discovery 
of the , deeper truth of beauty, but truth of ideas and truth of reason’. 
Obviously this cannot satisfy the hunger of genius of the real creative artist. 
For, he seeks to realise and express, above all, the truth of beauty — ^not the 
beauty of the form, but the soul of beauty. It is claimed sometimes that 
classical art which is based largely on the perfection of technique and on 
the canons of reason is undoubtedly great art. Without going deep into 
t^ question we can state that the claim appears to us inadmissible. A 
distinction has to be drawn between real classical art and the art that is 
pseudo-classical, and intellectual imitation of the externals of the true 
classical. The former is the expression of an inspiration from within and 
owes no allegiance to reason. The latter is principally a rational con- 
struction and easily degenerates into the formal and academical. We have 



man’s bbasok and his quest op teuth, good and beauty 81 

a glaring instance of this in the singing of classical Dhrupads in present- 
day India. We see how what was really and truly the delivery of a soul 
message at one time has degenerated into vocal gymnastics— clever no doubt, 
but soulless. 

Allowing that creation of beauty depends very largely on inspiration 
from above, must it not be conceded that appreciation of beauty, at least, 
is principally a critical intellectual process? We have no hesitation in 
answering the question in the negative. To concede such a thing would be 
almost tantamount to acknowledging that a knowledge of anatomy is necessary 
for the proper appreciation of, say, the Venus of Milo or the Buddha of Samath 
or that a knowledge of optical laws is essential for the full enjoyment of 
Murillo’s Immaculate Conception. An anatomical or optical knowledge 
may, we admit, play a part, but a very subordinate part, the supreme judge 
being the light from within. As we have remarked already, in the quest of 
Truth as in the quest of Beauty the important function of reason is to 
enlighten the obscure and the crude instincts of the lower mental. Here too in 
aesthetic appreciation the business of the intellect 'is to analyse the elements, 
parts, external processes, apparent principles . . . and explain their relations 
and workings’. But that is all; as with the truth of religion so with 
the truth of beauty, reason cannot get at the inner soul unless aided by an 
intuition higher than itself. The unaided intellect studies only from the 
outside, and misses the intimate contact of soul with soul. The earliest 
stage of the appreciation of beauty was instinctive and inborn, natural and 
imenlightened. The rational stage is analytical but tends to be technical 
and artificial, and possibly academic. When teclmical analysis has gone on 
too long, the artist, the creator of beauty, rebels and in defiance of criticism 
laimches upon a new principle of creation. Very often this revolt awakens 
a wider and deeper appreciation, the contact of soul with soul is established 
and rationalism prepares to exceed itself and open out to receive the intuitive 
light from above. Thereafter, in the words of the Master, ‘intuitive intelli- 
gence . . sufficiently trained and developed can take up the work of the 
intellect itself and do it with a Power and Light greater and surer than the 
power and light of the reason’. 

All this applies equally well to beauty in nature and beauty in life as much 
as to beauty in the great creative arts. In fact, all beauty is one. Beauty 
of form perceived by the senses, beauty of the ideas seized by the mind and 
the soul of beauty seized by the spirit, these are aU manifestations of the 
ineffable Beauty of the Absolute, the .Divine. It is the Divine whom we are 
over seeking as much through beauty as through religion. ‘To find highest 
beauty is to find God.’ 

The principle and law underlying our quest of Truth and our quest of 
Beauty apply equally well to our quest for the Good. In fact, the principle 
is of universal application. Behind all human movement lies the great truth 
that aU active being is a seeking for the hidden Divine— the God immanent 
in all beings and in all things — ^the One in whom all the diversity, the 
6 



82 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


disharmony and the discord of the Many find their unity. He is the supreme 
Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty — Satyam, ^ivam, Sundaram. 

This^ quest of God is also the quest of our highest and completest self— 
‘some perfect highest term ... by which all our imperfect lower terms can be 
justified’. It is only by realising this true self that we can rise above the 
apparent division, attain to a 'sense of unity and divinise our life on earth. 

The religious being and the aesthetic being in man realise this easily 
enough, because in the cult of the spiritual and the cult of the beautiful there 
is always a certain amount of inwardness and abstraction. Herein lies the 
great value of religion and art to .the man of the world. It is when we come to 
what we are pleased to call practical life that we fight shy of the universal 
truth and submit ourselves to passing utilities, become slaves of an outward 
necessity. But even so, the path upwards is not closed to us. For, as the 
Master says, ‘All life is only a lavish and manifold opportunity for discovering, 
realising and expressing the Divine.’ 

This great truth is quite apparent in our ethical life. The highest good 
is the same as the highest practicality or the highest utility. Beason, in 
tr3dng to establish its own sway over ethics, clouds the truest truth and 
makes ethics out to be an observance of certain rational rules and regulations. 
The extraordinary system of utilitarian ethics formulated in the nineteenth 
century was a result of this. The Master describes it as the ‘reduction of 
ethical action to an impossibly scientific and quite impracticable jugglery of 
moral mathematics’. Equally imtenable and futile are such theories of 
ethics as the Hedonistic or the Sociological, defining good as something that 
gives pleasure, or as something which satisfies social needs. Highest Good 
is certainly highest Bliss. It may also be conceded that there is a certain 
pleasure or satisfaction in accomplishing good. But, surely, that cannot 
make pleasure a standard of virtue in life. Often one has to undergo palpable 
suffering in order to do a good or virtuous deed. ’ It may no doubt be argued 
that the doer feels a subtle and exalted delight even while he is suffering 
outwardly. But in reality the act is never motived by any pleasure or delight* 
however high; the ethical man in purauing the good is obeying an innate call 
of his being, that is all. Likewise, the* ethical man obeying an inner urge 
has very often to go against Society, has even to hoist the standard of revolt. 
And history records that more often than not he wins and Society loses. So 
the good that one pursues is independent of the mandates of Society. All 
these clever constructions of the intellect cannot bind the ethical being, for 
it follows its own eternal nature. It is. a law imto itself. 

Like our search for Truth and our search for Beauty, our search for 
Good started from the infra-rational, from our ethical instincts and 
impulses. This we see clearly exemplified in the primitive animal life of today. 
The ant of the ant-hill and the bee of the beehive undoubtedly have instincts 
of self-giving and joint action. Instinctively, but blindly, they follow a law, 
and appear to know what is right. The predecessors of Homo Sapiens, 

the man-ape and even the sub-hximan dawn man must have done much 

6b 



man’s season and his quest of tsuth, good and beauty 83 
« 

the same thing. They obeyed a law without a knowledge of the why and 
the wherefore. Instinctively they felt that the law came from some power 
higher than themselves. Then when the intellect awoke in them, they sought 
to understand the law and to use their primitive impulses intelligently. They 
'corrected the.crudities of their instincts, arranged a system and laid down rules 
of conduct. But all mason’s efforts to enmesh the ethical being in its network 
of canons and regulations prove ultimately to be fruitless. Man in his 
upward trend glimpses an inner light, an inner being, whom he finds to be a 
surer guide than his half-lit intelligence and to it he confidently entrusts his 
futm’e evolution. 

Man thus realises that good and evil are not things to be mathematically 
calculated or logically reasoned out. He aspires to grow into the perfection 
of divine nature. He turns upwards to the purity of the divine being, to 
divine laiowledge, _ divine might and divine love. This is the hi g h transcen- 
dence towards which he has been struggling from the start. In the meantime 
he carries on with his rational intellect. Considerations of partial utility, 
transient utility, outward necessity guide his conduct. Highest and truest 
utility he does not see as yet. If he did, he would perceive the highest good 
as well. The rational man’s ethical standards are variable. He knows no 
permanent values. For instance, we believe implicitly that theft and adultery 
are evil and sinful. Yet a little thought would show us that there can be no 
theft where there is no law of property, and no adultery where there is no 
marriage. Again, Bama and Sita in the Bilmayapa fulfil our highest ideal 
of the holy sacrament of maiTiage. Yet the Jatakas tell us that Sit& was 
the sister of Bama and that they got married with the full approval of 
their people. Such a marriage is outrageous and repugnant to our sentiment, 
but was by no means so to the writer of the Jataka. Again, polyandry 
was known to ancient India and is not unknowm amongst certain peoples 
even in the India of today. Yet ethical considerations forced the author of 
the Mahabharata to put fonvard a phantastic story to aceount for Draupadi 
marrying the five Pandava brothers. Instances need not be multiplied. 
It is obvious that an act which is moral in one country may be immoral in 
another, that an act which is good in one age may be sinful in another. 
Bational ethics is therefore quicksand and man cannot build on it. He 
must move forward to firmer ground. Out of the infra-etliical he has emerged 
into the ethical; he will in due course transcend the ethical and enter into 
the supra-ethical. The supra-ethical is a consummation of the ethical, but 
before he reaches it, man must travel assiduously the long road of the etliical. 

We are now in a position to understand what the Master says. ‘Bising 
from its infra-rational beginnings through its intermediate dependence on 
the reason to a supra-rational consummation, the ethical is like the aesthetic 
and the religious being of man a seeking after the Eternal.’ i 


X Based on the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. 


CALENDAR THROUGH AGES AND ITS REFORM 

By 

Db. M. N. Saha, D.So., F.R.S., F.N.I., F.R.A.S.B., 

Palit Professor of Physics, Calcutta University 

We all know and use the calendar which is an indispensable requisite of 
civilized life. It is a table of the days of the year, divided into months and 
weeks, showing the chief holidays and festivals, religious, national or 
otherwise. We are guided throughout the year in our activities by thO' 
calendar, which is prepared beforehand by calendar-makers, who arc, or 
at least ought to be, astronomers, and we keep it suspended either on the 
waU, or on our table for ready reference. 

But calendars are as numerous as nations. The major part of the world 
uses the Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory VII in 1582 A.D.: 
Europe and America for religious as well as economic purpose, the rest of the 
world for economic purpose which is a consequence of European domination, 
but Hindus, Moslems and Buddhists have their own individual religious 
calendars. This multiplicity of calendars ^ produces serious inconvenience 
to the economic progress of many countries. 

Even the Gregorian calendar is unsatisfactory and arbitrary. The 
months are of unequal duration as expressed in the well-known doggerel : 
Thirty days hath September, 

April, June and November 
All the rest hath thirty-one 
Excepting February alone 
Which has twenty-eight 
And twenty-nine in each leap year. 

Why is this arbitrariness? Why has February 28 or 29 and others 
have 30 or 31 days ? But more serious is the inconvenience caused by the 
wandering of some important religious holidays. The Easter festival may 
fall any day between March 22 and April 25, a total amplitude of 36 days. 
The Easter is a pivotal holiday, and many others move with it. This periodic 
wandering of the Easter and associated holidays produces general 
inconvenience, and dislocates public and private work. Further, the cycle 
of 7 days known as the week runs on throughout the year, and there is no 
knowing, on a priori grounds, with what day of the week the year or the 
month is .to begin. 

The now defunct League of Nations appointed a Calendar Reform 
Committee for a rational reform of the calendar. Two proposals have been 


In certain parts of Yugodavia and in Pdlestino business is fully or partly closed for three 
days in the vreok, viz. Friday, Saturday ond Sunday: Friday being Mohostedan prayer-day, 
Saturfay bo^ Jewish Sabbath, Sunday being Christian Lord's day. In India, all public officials 
Md industnalists are aware how much businesa suffers or is held up on account of frognent 
holidays coming at oil times of the year. 


CALENDAR THROUGH AGES AND ITS REFORM 


85 


before the CJommittee, viz. the thirteen-month nalendmi* and the reformed 
twelve-month calendar. The two systems are illustrated below. 

ThirtAen-monih Galmdar 

In the 13-month calendar there are to be 13 months in the year, each 
of 4 weeks and each week of 7 days. Every month is to begin with a 
Sunday and end in a Saturday. This calendar is extremely simple compared 
with the present system where January may begin with a Sunday but 
February may begin with Tuesday and so on. According to this reformed 
scheme, the regular year will consist of 364 days, but as the actual year is 
nearly 366|- days, it is proposed in the' 13-month calendar system that in 
ordinary year the last day will be an extra day and will be called a second 
extra Saturday. For the leap year it is proposed to leave two extra Saturdays, 
one at the end of December (Year End day) and the other at the end of July 
(Year Middle day), having no name. 

All years alike. 

All months alike. 

Every month begins with Sunday and ends 
with Saturday. 

1 Month == 4 weeks = 28 days. 

1 Year =13 months = 28 x 13 = 364 days. 

One extra Saturday at the end of the year 
(Year End day). 

Two extra Saturdays in leap years (Year End day and Leap Year day). 

The idea of stabilizing the calendar in the above way was suggested to 
the Vatican by an Italian Padre Abbe Mastrofini in 1834 and the idea was 
revived by the positivist philosopher, August Comte, in 1849. He wanted to 
rename the months after the great men of the world. The main opposition 
to this calendar has been to the introduction of 13 months in place of 12. 

The Beformed Twelve-month Calendar 

The other system for calendar reform retains the 12 months as shown 
on the next page. 

This world calendar is a revision of the present calendar to correct its 
irregularities and discrepancies. It rearranges the length of the 12 months 
so that they are regular, making the year divisible into equal halves and 
quarters in a. ‘perpetual’ calendar. Every year is the same, every quarter 
identical. 

In this new calendeir each quarter contains exactly three months, IS weeks, 
91 days. Each quarter begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday. The first 
month in each quarter has 31 days and the other two 30 days each. Each 
month has 26 week days. 

In order to make the calendar perpetual, at the same time retaining 
astronomical accuracy, the 365th day of the year, called Year End day, is an 


ThxrUcn-mmth Calendar 


s 

M 

T 

W 

Th 

F 

S 

1 

2 

3 

4 

6 

6 

7 

8 

9 

10 

11 

12 

13 

14 

16 

16 

17 

18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 

24 

26 

26 

27 

28 




86 


B. C. LAW VOL'tTME 


i:xi>ST SJDwnnR Secoito Qumibr. 


January 


April 

S. M. T. W. T. P. S. 


S. M. T.W. r. F. S. 

1 2 3-4 8 0 7 

8 0 10 11 12 13 14 
10 10 17 18 10 20 21 
22 23 24 25 20 27 28 
20 30 31 


1 2 3 4 0 0 7 

8 0 10 11 12 13 14 
15 10 17 18 19 20 21 
22 23 24 25 20 2? 38 
29 30 31 

February 


^fay 

S.M. T.W. T. F.S. 


S. M. T. W. T. P. S. 

12 3 4 

8 0 7 8 0 10 11 
12 13 14 16 16 17-18 
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 
26 27 28 29 30 


12 3 4 

5 0 7 8 0 10 11 
12 IS 14 10 10 17 18 
10 20 21 22 23 24 25 
20 27 28 20 30 

March 


June 

S.M. T.W. T. F.S. 


S. BI. T. W. T. r. S. 

1 2 

3 4 8 0 7 8 0 
10 11 12 13 14 15 10 
17 18 16 20 21 22 23 
24 25 26 27 28 29 30 


1 2 

3 4 5 0 7 8 0 
10 11 12 13 14 15 10 
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 
24 25 20 27 28 29 30 


TniBS QttAsLTCii Fotmtn Quabwir 


July 


October 

S.M. T.W. T. P. S, 


B.M. T.W. T. F. S. 

1 2 3 4 5 0 7 

8 0 10 11 12 13 14 
15 10 17 18 10 20 21 
22 23 24 25 20 27 28 
,20 30 31 


1 2 3 4 5 0 7 

8 0 10 11 12 13 14 
15 10 17 18 10 20 21 
22 23 24 25 20 27 28 
20 30 31 

Aitguri 


November 

S. M. T. W. T. F. S. 


S.M. T.W. T. F. S. 

12 3 4 

5 0 7 8 0 10 11 
12 13 14 15 10 17 18 
10 20 21 22 23 24 25 
20 27 28 29 30 


12 3 4 

0 0 7 8 0 10 11 
12 13 14 15 10 17 18 
10 20 21 22 23 24 25 
20 27 28 20 30 



December 

S. M. T. W. T. F. S. 


S.M. T.W. T. F. S. 

1 2 

3 4 5 6 7 8 0 
10 11 12 13 14 15 10 
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 
24 25 20 27 28 20 30 


1 2 

3 4 5 0 7 8 0 
10 11 12 13 14 16 10 
17 18 10 20 21 22 23 
24 25 20 27 28 20 30 


intercalary day placed between December 30 and January 1, and is con- 
sidered an extra Saturday. The 366th day in leap year, called I«ap Year day, 
is intercalated between June 30 and July 1 on extra Saturday. These 
intercalary or stabilizing days are tabulated as December 31 or Y and June 31 
or L and would probably be observed as international holidays. January 1, 
New Year’s day, always falls on Sunday. 

‘The revised calendar is balanced in structure, perpetual in form, 
harmonious in arrangement. It conforms to the solar year of 366*2422 days . 
and to natural seasons. Besides its advantages in economy and efficiency, it 
facilitates statistical comparisons, co-ordinates the different time periods and 
^stabilizes religious and secular holidays when approved by their respective 
authorities. As compared with any other proposal for calendar revision, it 
offers adjustment in which transition from old to new order can be made with 
minimum of disturbance’ (from Journal of Calendar Reform). 

The supporters of the world calendar reform publish, a journal called 
World Gahndm Reform and through the I^eague of Nations they are trying to 
advocate the adoption of the reformed calendar throughout the world. But 
the 13-month calendar appears to have been given up, due to the un- 
popularity of the number 13 and due to some astronomical objections. But the , 
12-month calendar is being advocated for adoption by the League of Nations. 

Principles of Calendar-making 

Let us now examine the origins of some of the more important exiRting 
calendars and their imperfections, and also discuss whether it is at all possible 
to evolve a calendar which would be scientific and at the same time would not 







OAIiEK'DAB THBOITOH A6BS AND ITS BEFOBM 


87 


have the defects of the existing calendar ; and whether the calendars framed 
by the Calendar Beform Committees are satisfactory. 

The calendar has to deal with the great natural units of time, the Year, 
the Month, the Day and the artificial cycle of seven days called the Week. 
It has to accommodate religious festivals which have been bequeathed fix)m 
antiquity and have to be fixed according to complicated rules of rather obscure 
origin: national festivals which fall on some definite month days (say July 4, 
the day of Proclamation of American Independence) ; further, the calendar 
has to satisfy certain psychological needs of mankind, e.g., the prescription 
of a day of rest after a period of work. 

The first requisite for the calendar-maker at any age is a proper definition 
of the periods Year, Month and Day and a Imowledge of the lengths of the 
Year and the Month in terms of the day. In ancient times neither the 
definition nor the lengths of the year and the month were known accurately. 

■ As will be shown calendars were framed on insufficient knowledge and to make 
them acceptable to the people, religious sanction of various kinds was stamped 
on these systems. Though the mistakes were discovered sooner or later, it 
was found extremely difficult to introduce corrections, on accoimt of non- 
infiexibility of these sanctions, and none but dictators, like Julius Caesar or 
Pope Gregory, were able to carry out any reform, and this also when the 
discrepancies became intolerable. 

Let us take for example the definition of the day. The day has been 
measured from sunset to sunset, or sunrise to sumrise, from midday to next 
midday and it is only rather late that different nations, sometimes quite 
independently, found that it is more scientific to reckon from midnight to 
midnight and adopted it in practice. But even then, if the length of the 
day so defined is measured with the aid of an accurate clock, it is foimd to 
be variable throughout the year and astronomers have to define ‘a mean solar 
day’ as the fundamental unit of time. A more fundamental unit is the 
‘Sidereal day’ which measures the period of a complete rotation of the earth 
round its axis, which may be taken to be constant throughout ages. 

The Tear 

The next great unit is the year ; there are different kinds of year, but the 
year which is useful for calendar-making is the Tropical Year, which measures 
the period of recurrence of seasons. Its length in terms of the solar day is 
given by the relation 

Year = 365"24219879— lO'^x 614i ^ (time reckoned since 1900). 

The length of the year is thus seen to be not a constant. In Sumerian 
times (3000 B.(^.) it was nearly 365*2425 days. In modern times it is very 
nearly 365*2422 days, and we can use this length for a very long period yet to^ 
come. 

* Here t for one Julian century of 36526 days. According to astronomers the period 

of rotation of the earth is getting somewhat longer owing to the earth’s internal friction and 
friction as caused by tides. 



88 


B. 0. LAW VOLBMTJ 


It is obvious that the ancients could not have deteimined the length of 
the year to such accuracy. In fact, most of the nations in the early part of 
their career took the year to consist of 360 solar days, divided into 12 months, 
each of 30 days. This was certainly prompted by the observation that 
the year was roughly equal to 12 full periods of the moon, which is roughly 
30 days. But they did not take long to find out their mistake. Old Egyptian 
history has preserved the story of its discovery and the method of its rectifica- 
tion, which is illustrative of the ancient mind. Plutarch quotes the following 
story: 

‘The Earth god Seb and the sky goddess Nut had once illicit union. The 
supreme god Be, the Sun, thereupon cursed the heaven goddess Nv^ that the 
children of the union would be bom neither in any year nor in any month. 
Nut turned to the god of wisdom, Thoih, for counsel. Tlioth played a game 
of dice with the Moon-goddess, and won fi:om her ^^th part of her light out of 
which he made five extra days. To appease Be, the Sun-god, these five days 
were given to him, and his year gamed by five days while the Moon-goddess’s 
year lost five days. The extra five days in the solar year were not attached 
to any month, which continued to have 30 days as before ; but these days came 
at the end of the year, and were celebrated as the birthdays of the gods bom 
of the union of Beb and Nvi, viz., Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set and Anubis, five 
chief gods of Egyptian pantheon.’ 

With the ancient Egyptians, the moon and the lunar month soon ceased 
to play any part in time reckoning. They had a month of 30 days divided 
into 3 dekads or weeks, each of 10 days. The ancient Iranians followed 
the Egyptian calendar with some modification. Long afterwards, during 
the French Bevolution, some features of the Egyptian calendar were again 
sought to be introduced in calendar-making for the Bevolution. 

But the Egyptians soon found that 365 days were not the correct length 
of the year. The fact is said to have been discovered by the temple priests 
fijom observations of the heliacal rising of the star Sirius, and of the arrival 
of the annual flood of the Nile at the Egyptian capital. 

They found that the flood does not occur at intervals of 365 days. If in 
one year the flood arrived, say, on Thoth 1, after four years it occurred on 
Thoth 2, after eight years on Thoth 3, and the cycle was completed roughly 
in 1,460 years (called the Sothic Clyde). The flood may be ddayed for some 
reason, but the bright star Sirius, which stood for the Egyptian goddess Isis, 
was carefully observed for ritualistic purposes, and it was found, probably 
as a result of long continued observations, that between her two successive 
appearance a little ahead of the sun Just before dawn in the eastern horizon* 
the period was not exactly an Egyptian year of 365 days, but about 6 hours 
^ more ^ -in other words, the sun returned to the same point in the heavens not 
after intervals of 365 days, but after appro:rimately 365^ days. 

Though the priests early arrived at this knowledge, they kept it to them- 
selves, for a knowledge of the number of years elapsed since the beginning of 
t e othic Cycle (which they knew either from records, or from the place of 


OAIiENDAB THROUGH AGES AND ITS REFORM 


89 


Sirius on the first day of the year) enabled them to predict the date in the 
Egyptian calendar when the annual flood, so important for Egyptian economic 
life, would reach the capital. By keeping their hold on the calendar, they 
maintained their influence on the public, and Pharaohs are said to have, as a 
part of the rituals connected with their coronation ceremony, an oath promising 
never to try to reform the calendar. 

During the rule of the Ptolemies (320 B.C. to 40 B.C.) a determined 
effort was made to introduce the SOSJ-day year, but it failed on accoimt of the 
opposition of Egyptian priests. It was only after the Homan occupation 
of Egypt, that this knowledge was brought to the notice of the Homan dictator 
Julius Caesar by the Graeco-Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes. The calendar of 
Home itself was a hopeless mess, and Caesar, in his capacity as the Supreme 
Pontiff, effected a reformation which received the name of Julian calendar. 
It is pretty nearly the modem European calendar, with leap years occurring 
every fourth year. 

This was on the assumption that the true length of the tropical year was 
365'25 days, but actually the length is 365*2422 days, so there remained a 
mean error of *0078 days per year. By 1682 A.D., the error had accumulated 
to nearly 13 days, so that the Winter Solstice which in Caesar’s time fell on 
Dec. 24, and on Dec. 21, about 364 A.D. when the Christian era was introduced, 
occurred by 1682 A.D. on Dec. 1 1. Pope Gregory, on the advice of astronomers, 
Clavius and Lilius, decreed that Oct. 6 in that year should be called Oct. 16, 
so that the date of the Winter Solstice was brought from Dec. 11 to Dec. 21 
(the date it had about 354 A.D. when the Christian era was introduced) and 
henceforth years ending in himdreds would not be considered leap years, 
except when they are divisible by 400. This makes the length of the year 
365*2426, an error of *0003 days per year; this will introduce an error of 1 day 
in 3,300 years. The Gregorian calendar was accepted by all Homan Catholic 
countries, but was rejected by the Protestant and the Greek Church countries 
(e.g., the Balkan States and Hussia). The Protestant countries accepted the 
Gregorian calendar within about 200 years, but Hussia had Julian calendar 
till 1918, when the Soviets substituted the Gregorian calendar. 

What is the reason for the present mess in the Julio-Gregorian calendar ? 
The Homans took the Egyptian year, but retained their own months. The 
Homan year started with March 1 and ran for ten months — March, April, 
May, June, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December, 
total 304 days, some months being major ones of 31 days, others being minor 
of 30 days. The first fom: months were dedicated to Mars and other gods, 
Quintilis was the fifth, Sextilis sixth, etc. December was, as the name 
indicates, the tenth month. At the end of the tenth month, two months were 
interpolated, first of which was dedicated to the god. Janus, and Eebruary 
was not dedicated to any god. About 136 B.C., the starting point of the 
year was brought down to January 1, for some reason not clearly known. 

When Julius Caesar reformed the calendar, the servile senate decreed 
that the month Quintilis shoidd be renamed ‘July’ in his honour and further 


90 


B. 0. LAW VOIitTMU 


it should be a major month of 31 days. His successor Augustus persuaded 
the senate to rename the sixth month Sixtilis in his favour, and not to bo 
outdone by his predecessor, ordained that it should be a major month of 31 days. 
To find out these two extra days, February,- -which does not appear to have 
been imder the protection of any god, was clinched of two days. As a critic - 
says, it was not a ‘Reformation’ but a ‘Deformation’ of the calendar to satisfy 
the whims of two Roman despots. 

Even Pope Gregory’s reformation was rather incomplete. He ought 
to have brought down the Christmas day from Dec. 26 -to Dec. 21, but Dec. 26 
had got into the people’s head as the day following the night of Christ’s birth 
and even Christ’s -viceregent on the earth did not dare to disturb the public 
equanimity. The reforms fell far short of the achievements of Omar 
Khayyam, the astronomer poet and free-thinking philosopher of Persia who 
at the bidding of Sultan Melik Shah introduced in 1079 a solar calendar (the 
Jalali calendar), based on the first day of the Vernal Equinox, as the first day 
of the year. 

TM Month 

The third great natural division of time besides the day and the year is 
the month. ^ This had originally a lunar af&liation. In fact, the month is 
really the ‘Moonth’, the time taken by the moon from one conjunction with 
the sun to another. The moon really traverses the sky, i.e. return from one 
fixed point of the sky, say the star Regulus, to the same in about 27^ days 
(Sidereal period of the moon), but since the sun moves in the same direction, 
it takes a little longer time to reach the sun (29’ 6306881 days (Hewcomb), length 
of a lunar month). 

In most ancient covmtries, amongst most nations the first day of the 
month was reckoned from the evening of appearance of the thin crescent of 
the moon in the western horizon after a new moon, and successive days were 

kno-wn as the second, third day of the moon. It was very much like the 

practice still followed by the Islamic countries. The system of reckoning 
days by the moon was almost universally in vogue amongst all ancient nations, 
Babylonians, Hindus, Greeks and Romans, and is the basis of the Hindu 
system of ‘Tithi’ which was originally nothing but a ‘Lunar Day’, and this, 
in a modified form, is still used for religious purposes to fix up festival days. 
The Hindus further divided the month into a bright (waxing) half eT»diT^g in a 
full moon in the midst of the month, and a dark (waning) half ending in a 
new moon. The lunar zodiac was divided into 27 (or earlier 28) parts, called 
Nakshatras or Lunar Mansions and named according -to conspicuous star 
groups marking the moon’s path. A day would be distinguished as the 
eighth day of the moon in the bright half, with the moon in Hakshatra 
Regulus for example. This custom of fixing the position of the moon was 
also prevalent amongst the Babylonians and Chinese, and it is difiicult to 
trace its origin. 

The empirical nature of reckoning the days of the moon is corroborated 
from references in old classics like the Mahabharata, where it is mentioned 



OAI/ENDAB THROtTGH AGES AND ITS BEFOBST 


91 


that the full moon sometimes fell on the thirteenth lunar day. The full moon 
evidently cannot fall on the tliirteenth day after the new moon, probably the 
observers occasionally used to miss the first day of appearance of the thin 
crescent after full moon, due to the moon’s nearness to the sun or some other 
p reason. When the full moon was found to fall on the thirteenth day, it was 
surmised that some great calamity would befall the coimtry or the potentates 
who ruled the country. The moon is generally invisible for two or three 
nights round about new moons, and this was probably the origin of the wide- 
spread custom of observing mourning for three nights. 

Most, but not all, religious ceremonies had a lunar as well as a solar 
affiliation, as in Babylon, somewhat as in finding out the date of the Passover 
with the Jews, e.g. the Spring festival should be celebrated on the full moon 
day during the lunar month of Chaitra in the spring season. Thus custom 
led to the necessity of correlating lunar months with the solar seasons. The 
week day was unknown in ancient time, and even to this day the week day 
plays no part in most of the Hindu festivals, particularly the more important 
ones. 

iSokir Months 

The idea that the year should he divided into 12 months must have 
arisen from the observation that 12 lunar months nearly cover the year. 

. But 12 lunar months is 354*36706 days, and falls short of the year by 10*875 
days. How to adjust this ? There was grave reason why this adjustment 
should have been considered extremely necessary. In the life of early nations, 
religious festival played an extremely important part. Let us suppose that a 
certain incident, say, the worship of a god, was to be celebrated in the season 
of autumn at full moon. Now, suppose in a certain year, the festival falls 
on the last day of autumn, next year we shall lose 10*875 days; the event will 
have to be celebrated 1 1 days earlier than the end of autumn. Two years later, 
it is to be celebrated 22 days earlier. In 6 years, the retardation will be 
very nearly two months and the event will fall not in the season of autumn 
at all but in the rains. So adjustment is necessary unless we discard the 
connection with the season entirely as the Mahomedans have done. This 
the ancients were not prepared to do; they made the adjustment by bringing 
the event forward by calling two months in '5 years as unclean or useless 
months and prohibiting the celebration of the festival within these two months. 
By this artifice at the end of 5 years, the event will again fall at the end 
of autumn. Amongst certain nations instead of putting such intercalary or 
useless months, also called the thirteenth month, at the end of every 6 years, 
one intercalary month is put at the end of every 2^ years and sometimes 
some other equivalent arrangement is made. 

But the inconsistency of the sun and the moon cannot be so easily settled. 
It is a much more difficult problem and, as a matter of fact, the ingenuity of 
the ancient nations had to be taxed to the breaking point to bring about 
consistency between the month and the year. Some, like the Mahomedans, 
discarded the sun altogether, others like the Egyptians discarded the moon. 


92 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


Those liTrfl the Hindus and the Babylonians, who wanted to keep both, fell 
into such complications that as arbiter of the days of religious festivals, much, 
power passed into the hands of priests. 

Attempts at Calendar Reform by Hindus 

A very determined effort to reform the Hindu calendar is traceable ftom 
the third or the fomth century A.D., when the Hindu scientific treatises on 
astronomy began to take definite shape. According to the Suryya-Siddhanta, 
the standard Hindu astronomical treatise which had its beg innin gs about 
these times, the solar year is to begin with the vernal equinox, which was 
then (co. 606 A.D.) near the star g-Piscium. The first month of the solar year 
would be the second month of the spring (according to the Hindu method of 
calculation but the first month of the spring according to the Huropean method 
of calculation) . The month was known under the lunar appellation of Vaisakh. 
The solar appellations given in column 2 of Table 1 are indicative of seasons, 
but they never came into use. The lunar year was to begin with the previous 
month of Ohaitra, i.e. within a month before the sun’s passage through vernal 
equinox, on the first day after the new moon (according to some systems on the 
first day after the full moon). This system is to be compared to the older 
Babylonian system of starting the year with the month of Hisannu, which had 
to start on the first day following the new moon, but not earlier or later than 
a month of the vernal equinox. The comparison between the Hindu and 
the Babylonian systems is shown in Table 1 on the next page. 

Though the Hindus started (or rather reformed) their calendar on a 
quite scientific basis about 600 A.D., with the V.E. day as the first day of the 
year, and with an elaborate series of rules for adjustment between solar and 
lunar reckoning, the intended stabilization of the calendar has been spoilt 
by the mistake they committed in taking the length of the year to be .366*26876 
days. This is nearly *0166 longer than the tropical year. So after 1,400 years, 
the . last day of the year now no longer falls on the day of passage of the sun 
through the vernal equinoctial point, but nearly 23 days earlier. But in 
terms of the Hindu calendar, the equinox is a fixed point, near J-Piscimn 
which was the position of the equinox about 600 A.D. 

This error is to be traced to the fact that though the phenomenon of the 
precession of the equinoxes appears to have been known to the Hindu astro- 
nomers of this period, they were imder the impression that the movement of the 
equinoctial points was oscillatory in character, and after some time the points 
would retrace their paths, so it was unnecessary to ,use the tropical year. 
The year was therefore taken to be sidereal i (Nirayan) without caring for the 
motion of equinoxes. There was a similar idea about the motion of equinoxes 
in Europe too (theory of trepidation) but the theory lost its last adherent, 
after Newton explained planetary motion with the aid of the theories of 
gravitation. As is well known, precession is a dynamical effect, and is due 


* Sidereal year has 3G6'256363 days. The Hindu sidereal year is -0024 doy longer. 



OAI.BNJDAB THKOTTOH AGES AND ITS REEOKM 


93 


Table 1. 



' Hindu 

1 

Babylonian 

Macedoifian 

French 

Revolutionary 

Solar 

Lunar 

V.B. 

April 

Madhava 

Vaisakli 

Nisannu 

Artemesios 

Germinal 

(Buds). 

May 

Sukra 

Jyaistha 

Airu 

Daisios 

Floreal 

(Flower). 

Juno ' .. 

Suchi 

Aahadha 

Sivannq 

Ponemos 

.Praireal 

(Meadows). 

S.S. 

July 

Nabhas 

Sravan 

Duzu 

Loios 

Messidor 

(Harvest). 

August . . 

Nabhasya 

Bhadra 

Abu 

Goipiaios 

Thermidor 

(Heat). 

September 

Isha 

Aswin 

Ululu 

Hyerberetios 

Fructidor 

(Fraits). 

A.E. 

October. . 

i 

Urjas 

I 

Kartik 

Tasritu 

Dios 

Vendemaire 

(Vintage). 

November 

Sahas 

i 

Agrahayan 

ArrahSamnah 

Appelaios 

Brumaire 

(Fog). 

December 

Saha^ 

Pous 

Eisilibu 

Audynaios 

Frimaira 

(Frost). 

W.S. i 

January 

Tapas 

Magba 

Dhabitu 

Peritios 

Nivose 

(Snow). 

February 

Tapasya 

Falgun j 

Subuddu 

Dystros 

Pluvioso 

(Rain). 

March . . 

Madhu 


Addarru 

Xonthicos 

Ventose ' 
(Wind). 


According to tho Hindu method of calculation, the spring season extends for two 
months on either side of tho vernal equinox, and so in rei^ect of the autumnal equinox for the 
autumn season. Tho European method is to count os Spring tho period of three months 
following sun's passage through vomal equinox. Tho Hindu namos of the solar months (given 
in column 2) fell into disuse, and the names of the lunar months survived, and were later used 
to denote the solar months os well. Tho Macedonian months wore current in India up to the 
Kushan rdgime. Tho Babylonian months are still used by orthodox Jews, but tho spellings 
have undozgono slight changes. 

Tho French Revolutionary year started on tho day of the autumnal equinox, Sept, 22, 1792. 
Each month (shown in column 0) hod 30 days, each divided into 3 weeks each of 10 days. 
They had 6 extra yoar-ohd doys (Sept. 17 to Sept. 21) like the ancient Egyptians and these 
were days of national festivities dedicated to VIRTUE, GENIUS, LABOUR, OPINIOIT, 
REWARDS. Tho Jews and the Macodom'an Greeks started their year on tho day of autumnal 
equinox like the French Revolutionaries later. Tho first column shows the months as they 
would bo arranged if tho proposals made in this essay were accepted. 

to the fact that the earth is not exactly spherical. The value of the speed 
of piecessiohal motion has been calculated from dynamics, and is proportional 






























































94 


U. C. LAW VOLUME 


to the difference between the moments of inertia of the earth round equatorial 
and polar axes, and it is unidirectional. 

But all this science has not yet reached the Hindu astrologers who still 
carry on the task of calendar-making according to the old Suryya-Siddhanta, 
or other systems. The passage of the sun through the vernal equinox 
is 23 days behind the date given in the Hindu almanac and the corre- 
spondence with seasons, which is a necessary requisite for proper deter- 
mination of times of religious festivals, has been lost. The whole system of 
calculation is therefore vitiated and should be given up. The calendar should 
be retarded by 23 days, for Nature will not oblige the Hindu almanac-makers 
by stopping the inexorable operation of the Law of Universal Gravitation to 
save accumulated Hindu superstitions. Several attempts at Hindu calendar 
reform have been made by several enlightened public men, notably by the 
late Mr. B. G. Tilak, but the attempts failed because there was no political or 
religious authority behind their attempts. So the vendors of superstition are 
able to carry on their trades as profitably as ever, and prepare from year to 
year an Encyclopaedia of Superstitions for the use of hundreds of millions of 
people, based on wrong calculations and obsolete theories. 


The Cycle of Weeks 


The seven-day week, unlike the Year or the Month, is an entirely artificial 
cycle, imconnected with any natural phenomenon. It is approximately 
a quarter lunation, and its use probably arose from the psychological need 
for having a day of rest after protracted work. In early stages, we can trace 
*a lunar week’ which was half the period between new and full moon, but as 
the number of days were variable due to the erratic behaviour of the moon, 
the need for a period having a fixed number of days arose. 

The ancient Vedic Aryans had a Shadaha, a cycle of six days; the 
Babylonians, with whom the week arose, had at first a week of five days of 
a limation), which was later increased to seven which is approximately J of a 
lunation. Each day was named according to a planetaiy god. This was 
certainly to give sanctity to the system, a familiar ancient-time practice. As 
the myth of the sanctity of seven-day week has played a great port in calendar- 
making and growth of astronomical superstitions, its evolution is explained 
at some detail: The Babylonians put the planets (not used in modern sense, 
but used in the old sense of a wandering heavenly body) as follows in the 
order of their apparent distance from the earth, and identified them with their 
chief gods, who held the portfolios mentioned under their names: 


Planet 

Saturn 

Jupiter 

Mars 


(1) 

(2) 

(3) 

Babylonian •) 

Ninib 

Mardub 

Nergal 

God 5 

(Pestilence) 

(King) 

(War) 


Sun 

Venus 

Mercury 

Moon 

(4) 

(S) 

(6) 

(7) 

Shamash 

Ishtar 

Kabu 

Sin 

(Justice) 

(Love) 

(Writing) 

(Agricul- 

ture). 


OALENDAB THEOUGH AGES AND ITS BEFOKil 


9S 


Further the day was divided into 24 hours, and each of the seven gods 
was supposed to keep watch on mankind over each hour of the day in rotation. 
The day was named after the god who kept watch at the first hour. Thus 
on Saturday, the watching god for the first hour was Ninib or Saturn and the 
day was named after him. The succeeding hours of Saturday were presided 
over as follows : 


Hours ..1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 

IB 16 17 IB 19 20 21 

God 



^ratching 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 


The table shows the picture for Saturday. On this day, Satui-n keeps 
watch at the first hour, so the day is named after him. The second hour is 

watched over by Jupiter (3), third by Mars (4) and so on, Saturn is 

thus seen to preside at the 8th, 15th and 22nd hours of Saturday. Then 
for 23rd, 24th, 26th come in succession Jupiter (2), Mars (3), Sun (4). The 
26th hour is the first hour of the next day, which was accordingly named 
after the presiding planet No. 4. We thus get Sunday following Saturday. 
If we now repeat the process, we get the names of the week days following 
each other, as follows ; 

Saturday, Simday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday, 
With the Babylonians, Saturday was an evil day, dedicated to the God of 
Pestilence, and they avoided work on that day for fear of offending that deity. 

► The child which was born at any hour of the day was supposed to be 
under the special influence of the god presiding for that hour. The practice 
of casting horoscopes also can be traced to these times. 

The great propagandists for the seven-day week have been the Jews who 
derived their civilization partly from Egyptians, but mostly from Babylon 
and Assyria, adopted the seven-day week, and conferred on it a new sanctity 
by inventing the Creation-myth which one can read m the opening chapter 
of the Bible. They converted the seventh day, which with the Babylonians 
was an ‘evil day’, to the day of rest for Jehovah after his labours of Creation 
(Sabbath day). So great has been the sanctity attached to the ‘Sabbath day’ 
that Jews all the world over would not work on the Sabbath day, and it is on 
record that Romans took advantage of this to make an assault on Jerusalem 
on a Sabbath day, and carried the city almost without a fight, because the 
Jews led by their priests would not do such profane things as giving battle 
on a. Sabbath day, and expected Jehovah to bring punishment on the Romans 
for the sacrilege. 

The seven-day week was introduced into the Roman World by 
Constantine after 323 A.I>. and as the Christians would not have the same 
Lord’s day as the Jews, the next day ‘Sunday’ was fixed as the Lord’s day. 
This had a most unfortunate consequence. The Bishops decided that the 
Easter, viz. the day of Resurrection of Christ should take place on Sunday 
following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The Jewish festival of 
Passover, on which day Christ is alleged to have been crucified, took place on 
the first full moon after vernal equinox, and it had no reference to week days. 


9G 


B. 0. tiAW VOIiUMB 


But the Christians must have the Resurrection on the ‘Lord’s day’, so the 
difficulties were multiplied. The result is that Easter can fall on any date 
between March 22 and April 26, with an amplitude of 36 days. As 
mentioned before, this is a pivotal holiday and carries many other important 
holidays with it as follo’ivs: — 


Easter day (day of Resurrection of Jesus) 


Good Friday ( — 2) 

Palm Sunday (—7) 
Qudragesima Sunday (—42) . . 
Ash Wednesday (—46) 

Quinquegesima Sunday (—49) 
etc. 


. . Low Sunday ( + 7) 

. . Rogation (+35) 

.. Ascension (+39) 

. . Whitsunday (+49) 
Trinity (+66) 

. . Corpus Christi (+60) 


Minus means before Easter, plus means after. Thus Good Friday (day of 
Crucifixion of Jesus) takes place 2 days before Eastcrj Ascension 39 days 
after Easter day. 

One of the greatest mathematicians of all times. Gauss, took upon himself 
the task of fintliTig out an easy empirical rule for finding out the date of the 
Easter in any year, but had not much success. 

The enlightened Christian nations stigmatize other nations as super- 
stitious, but their system of fixing dates for religious festivals has to satisfy 
the triple godhead of the sun (vernal equinox), moon (full moon) and the 
Babylonian seveh-planet hierarchy (seven-day week) while the Hindus have 
only to satisfy the sun and the moon for religious purpose. The accusation is 
therefore quite gratuitous, and the Christians should first get rid of their own 
accumulated superstitions before they accuse others of continuing theirs. 

Babylonian ingenuity, combined with a superstitious belief that planets 
stand for gods who rule human destiny according to mathematical plan, were 
thus responsible for the introduction of the seven-day week, and this let in a 
mighty flood of astrological superstitions which about the first centiuy A.D. 
quickly swept the civilized world from China and India in the East to Roman 
Empire in the West. The Bible, the Hindu Pauranic literature, the Laotzian 
school of Chinese philosophers built on this basis a vast maze of superstitious 
practices which, as in the case of the Christian festivals, still dominate a 
large section of the human population. Even the Arabs, otherwise iconoclastic, 
appeared to have had implicit faith in astrology. 

Let us examine the effect on Hindu ireligious life. Before, the introduction 
of the seven-day week, the Hindus like aU ancient nations had a system of 
reckoning for auspicious and inauspicious days, but this was based on com- 
bmation of moon’s phase with the lunar mansions. Thus a day of full moon 
in the lunar mansion of Pushya (a-Cancri) would be considered particularly 
auspicious, and feeding of Brahmins and Sramans on that day would bring, 
as Emperor Asoka hints in his inscription, many times greater merit than 
feeding such holy men on an ordinary day. There is no mention of week 


CALENDAR THROUGH AGES AND ITS REFORM 


97 


days in Asoka’s inscriptions, or in older Sanskrit literature like the Maha- 
bharata. When a hero’s birth is mentioned, only the moon’s phase, the 
particular lunar mansion (stars j on the \eoliptic) which the moon occupies, 
and sometimes the season are referred to. The first authentic record of ‘week 
day’ is found in the Eran inscription of the time of Emperor Buddhagupta 
bearing the date of 484 A.D. The seven-day week must have been introduced 
some time prior to this date, but probably after 200 A.D., for the Kushan 
inscription of these times makes no mention of week days. 

In the hands of Indian astrologers, the seven-day week became a very 
potent tool for inventing new myths, and enchaining the Indian mind with an 
amazing cobweb of superstitions. The major religious festivals which from 
time immemorial had lunar dating could not be touched, but they continued 
to be adjusted to season by the use of intercalary months. But by a com- 
bination of week days with lunar phases, a system .of calculating auspicious 
and inauspicious days regulating all phases of human activity and occupation 
, were devised. Only some days and hours are suitable for marriage ceremonies, 
others for starting on a journey, othera for entering a new house and so forth. 
A baby’s career would be determined by the planetary god presiding at his 
birth, and the relative position of other planets. A king would not ascend 
the throne or attack an enemy except on an auspicious day fixed up by 
astrologers. Indian history records several national misfortunes consequent 
on astrologers’ advice, similar to the occupation of Jerusalem by the Bomans 
or murder of Wallenstein by the hired assassins of the holy Eoman Emperor. 

Superstitions will continue in spite of science, but at several epochs of 
great historical events, determined efforts have been made to get rid of the 
seven-day week and the superstitions grown round it. The makers of the 
Erench Revolution introduced a ten-day week (decade) like the Egjrptians 
three thousand years earlier. The Bolsheviks experimented with a five-day, 
a six-day week and ultimately returned to the seven-day week. The ancient 
Iranians had no week days, but the days of the month were named after a 
god or a principle, e.g. day of Ahura Mazdah, day of Mithra, etc. Later they 
adopted seven-day week. 

The perpetual calendar retains the seven-day week, but according to some 
Jewish Rabbis the introduction of an extra day at the end of each year or two 
extra days during each leap year, which will belong to no week, is a sacrilege. 

It is dear from what has been said before that the planners of a Universal 
should never be under the illusion that they can plan a calendar 
which will satisfy all the religious communities of the world. Their task should 
be to frame an ‘Economic Calendar’ based on sound facts of astronomy. The 
seven-day week should be retained, chiefly because a day of rest after six 
days of work appear to be a psychological necessity, but there should be no 
background of religious thought behind the planning, for 'religions are rmny, 
reason is one ’ as one wise Chinese saying has it. 

7 



98 


B. O. I/AW VOI/IT^E 


Requisites of a> Perfect Oolcndar 

The above review shows that a perfect calendat should satisfy the following 
demands; — ' 

(а) The c?.lftTifln.r must follow ‘astronomical data accurately as far as 
possible*. 

Regarded from this point of view, the Gregorian adjustment by leap 
years is inferior to the Persian method introduced by Omar Khayyam in 
1079 A.D.; the Gregorian method has 97 leap years in 400 years, giving an 
average year-length of 366*2425 days, which wiU introduce an error of 1 day in 
3,300 years. If we have 31 leap years in 128 years, giving an average year- 
length of 366*24219 days, we shall have an error of 1 day in 100,000 years, 
and this is much to be preferred. 

(б) The beginning of the year should fall on a well-defined astronomical 
point, viz. either the vernal equinox, the winter solstice, the summer solstice 
or the autumnal solstice. 

The vernal equinox day is the beginning of the Persian New Year day 
(Nowroja). This, of all New Year’s days, is the most scientific. 

The Christian New Year day, January 1, has absolutely no scientific 
basis, and is reminiscent of Roman imperialism ^ which started its year on the 
day of Gk)d Janus. This should be given up, as God Janus has been long 
dead. 

The other nardinnl points of the year, particularly the winter solstice 
day (henceforth called W.S. day), formed sometimes the New Year’s day 
and a very important national festival amougst all nations inhabiting the 
northern hemisphere. The reason is not fair to seek. All residents of the 
north temperate zone, which contains the cradles of early civilization, have to 
suffer from the rigours of winter. During these days, they found the sun 
rising every day farther to the south, and the winter intensifying. On the 
W.S. day, the sun, after reaching the farthest south, begins to turn north, 
and this heralded to the ancients the impending passing away of unpleasant 
winter and was made the occasion for many festivities. The following may 
be noted: 

The Vedic Indians looked eagerly for the turning to the north of the sun 
(Uttarayana) and as soon as they were able to detect the phenomenon, they 
started their yearly sacrifices. (The festival is still celebrated by the Hindus 
under the name of Pous-Parvan, but the connection with W.S. is gone due to 
unreotified mistakes in the length of the yeaf» committed by early calendar- 
makers.) Later, about 600 A.D., the Y.E. was taken as the beginning of the 
solar year, but for the lunar year, there were various systems. 

The ancient Persians celebrated on the W.S. day the birthday ceremony 
of Mithra, their God of Light (probably an anthropomorphic form' of the sun). 

In China, Huang-Ti, the Yellow Emperor, who is said to have established 
the national calendar ab out 2300 B.O., ordained that on the W.S. day the 

' Boman year otigitjally etaxted vath. March 1, but in 136 B.C. it was brought down 
to January 1. 



OALUNDAB TJfBOUGH AGES AED ITS REFOBM 


99 


Sun of Hoftvon (i.o. fcho Emperor) should offer homage on behalf of the people 
to the ancestors of the nation. China retained this festival up to Manchu 
times in spite of all subsequent movements — Confucianism, Buddhism and 
Taoism. 

The primitive Teutonic races of North Europe celebrated the W.S. day 
under different forms (o.g. Yule). 

At present the night before the 25th of Dec. is celebrated all over the 
Christian World as the Night of Nativity of Christ. Twenty-fifth of December 
was the winter solstice day about the begiiming of the first centmy B.C. 

But the truth is that the W.S. day stands on its own merit, and had 
originally nothing to do with Christ. Probably it will surprise many of om: 
readers to know that * Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the 
Church, and before the fifth century A.D. there was no consensus of opinion 
os to when it should come on the calendar’ {Encyclopaedia Eriiannica, 14th 
edition, see article on Christmas). In other words, early Christians had no 
knowledge of the date and year of birth of Jesus, and the custom of celebrating 
the birth of Christ on the winter solstice night of the first century B.C. is a 
later concoction. 

The reason is not far to seek. None of the gospels mentions anything 
about the date and year of the birth of Christ, and the earliest and most reliable 
of them with respect to the incidents of Christ’s life, viz. the gospel of Mark, 
tells us that He was the son of a poor caq)enter of the village of Nazareth in 
the province of Galilee (Mark 6, 3), and at the age of 30 He began to preach 
His Gospel (Mark 1„ 9). The total period covered by His preachings pro- 
bably did not cover more than 17 months; these preachings gave offence to 
the orthodox Jews, and He was arrested by the orders of the High Priest 
two days before the Jewish festival of Passover, ^ which Jesus had come to 
celebrate along with his disciples in Jerusalem. The High Priest handed Him 
over to the Homan governor, by whose orders He was crucified the next day, 
and His body was interred in a cave through the intercession of a rich sym- 
pathizer of His teachings. When His disciples went to visit the Sepulchre 
on the first day of’tJic week, they found that the body had disappeared. The 
mention of the Passover festival gives us a point d’ appui regarding the date 
and season of His Crucifixion, and Christians have from the earliest times 
celebrated these incidents in the festivals of Good Eriday (day of Crucifixion), 
and- Easter day (Sunday following) as the day of Besurrection, though there 
are strong reasons to believe that the Jewish week, mentioned in the gospels> 
is not the present seven-day week but the original lunar week, and the Passover 
took place on the fourteenth day after the new moon. The seven-day week 
was then not yet in vogue, and no mystical importance had then been attached 
to the so-called Lord's day (Sunday). This was due to astrological influences 
on the growth of Christianity. 

When Christianity became the State religion of the Boman Empire in 
323 AJ)., the Christian Bathers felt the necessity of co-ordinating the then 
1 This festival is supposed to commemorate the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. 


100 


B. 0. IjAW vOliBME 


prevalent pagan festivals — some of "wliioh in spite of Christianity vrere very 
popular— with the incidents of Christ’s Hfe. It was a clever move, for it killed 
two birds with one stone. 

It is now well known that when Imperial Kome began to get weary of 
her pagan gods, she oscillated for a long time between the cults of Mithra 
and of Christ. The Mithra cult with its rich ritualism made a strong appeal 
to the military Roman mind. On the winter solstice day it was supposed 
on one version that Mithra, God of Light and Righteousness, was bom, fully 
clad and armed as a young warrior, chased a bull (symbolic of ignorance and 
lust), slaughtered it with a flashing knife, indicating the triumph of Light 

Righteousness, over Darkness and Lust. The festival was celebrated 
not only in Persia, but also all over the Roman Empire and was extremely 
popular. 

About 323 A.D. the cult of Christ found favour with the State, because 
the Emperor Constantine was under the impression that the god of Christians 
had given him victory over his rivals. The support of the State gave the 
Christian Fathers a great advantage over their rivals, the exponents of 
Mlthraism. They began further to improve their position by absorbing the 
rich rituals of Mithraism, including the birthday festival of Mithra, which 
became henceforth the Feast of Nativity of Christ. In the Julian calendar 
Dec. 26 or Dec. . 24 formed the W.S. day about the second century B.C., but 
though about 366 A.D., when we get first mention of Christmas, the W.S. day 
had fallen to Dec. 21, the earlier date, Dec. 26, was retained as the Christmas 
day. 

We thus see the W.S. day, the most prominent cardinal point of the year, 
has provided .dates for most important festivities of all nations. The other 
cardinal points of the year have also been utilized for this purpose by Hindus, 
early Christians and other nations. The following gives a summary view : 


Cardinal days 
of the year 

Christian 

Indian (Vedio) 

Chinese 

Perdan 

Jewish 

Winter Solstice 
(Dec. 25} 

Nativity of 
Christ. 

Commence' 
ment of 
yearly sacri- 
fices. 

Emperor 

wor^ps 

ancestors. 

Mithra’s 

Birthday. 

1 

.... 

Vernal Equinox 
(Much 26) 

Conception of 
Christ. 

• * • » 

• . • • 

Persian I 

Nowroja 
(New Year’s 
day). 

• . • • 

Summer Solstice 
(June 24) 

Birth of John 
the Baptist. 

Hari shayan, j 
Traditional 
beginnmg of 
monsoons. 

• • ■ • 1 

.... 

.... 

Autumnal 
Equinox 
(Sept. 24) 

Conception of 
John the 
Baptist. 

i 

1 

1 

Original ' 
Jewish New 
Year day. 


The dates are according to- the Julian calendar about first century A.D. 
366 A.D. the dates had receded by 4 days but the earlier days were kept. 





















CALENDAB THEOTJOn AGES AND ITS EEFOKMH'M^^ /* 




The early Christians thus draw up a parallel between the^^^^pq^on/ 
and the lives of John the Baptist and Jesus Clirist. John represents the sun 
during his motion in the southern half of the ecliptic, he is supposed to have 
been conceived on September 24, the day of autumnal equinox, and is bom 
272 days later, on the day of summer solstice. Christ represents the sun in 
his motion in the northern lialf of the ecliptic, he is taken to have been con- 
ceived on March 24, and is bom on the winter solstice day, 276 days later. 


Beginning of the Em 

The question of the starting point of an world era is also an important 
item to which some attention should be given but it has been entirely ignored 
by the framers of the perpetual calendar, because they believe that the Christian 
era should be acceptable to all nations of the world. As we shall see 
presently, the Christian ora has neither universal acceptance, nor has any 
distinguishing merit to recommend itself as a world era. 

The requisites of the world ora should be that it should be connected 
/ with an easily definable astronomical event, and should have no affiliation 
with any religion, country, or personality. Let us see how many eras, in use 
now or in earlier times, satisfy this criterion. 

The orthodox Jews use an era which they call era of Creation. It starts 
on Oct. 7, 3761 B.C., for this is the date, according to Jewish Babbis, when 
Jehovah started creating the world as narrated in the Bible. No further 
notice need be taken of this era. 


The Christian Era 

The Christian nations begin the era with the presumed year of Christ’s 
birth. This is another myth invented by the Christian Fathers, and came 
into vogue about 600 A.D. duo to the exertions of Bishop Dionysius Exiguus. 
Before that nobody Imew the year of Clnist’s birth, and the era used in the 
Boman Empire prior to 600 A.D. was reckoned from the date of the supposed 
foundation of Borne {763 B.C.). This was, like the Christian era, an artificial 
invention. 

Some years ago, a Boman inscription was discovered at Ankarah, which 
said that king Herod, who is alleged in the Bible to have attempted to take the 
life of Baby Jesus, was dead by 4 B.C. So Christ must have been bom at 
least 4 years, and most probably 6 or 8 years, before the year invented for his 
birth. There is, therefore, no scientific reason in a modem world to stick to the 
fiction of the year of Christ’s birth as the beginning of an era for a modem 
world. 

The other eras of the world, the Olympian era of the ancient Greeks, the 
era of foundation of Borne (these two eras appear to haye been based on the 
era of Nabonassar, the Babylonian king), the Nirvana era of the Buddhists, the 
Sambat and Saka eras of t^Hindus, the Kali Yuga era invented by Aryabhate, 
are all artificial eras, whose beginnines are shrouded in mystery. Some of the 
now defunct eras, viz. the ‘ the Seleucidean 


102 


B. 0. IiAW VOLtJME 


era (started on the first Nisannu of 313 B.O. to commemorate the victory of 
Seleuous over his rivals) had well-defined starting points, but the point remains 
that the reckoning of an era ^mmemorating or supposed to commemorate 
some great incident in the history of a group of people cannot command 
universal homage, and should be replaced by a more scientific starting point. 

When the makers of the glorious Erench Revolution started to cut the 
world adrift from agelong superstitious practices, particularly C5hristian 
superstitions, they turned to the Rrench Academy for finding out a convenient 
starting point for a new era for the Republic. The great astronomer Laplace 
was consulted, and he recommended to the Republique 1260 A.D. as the 
starting point of the new era. The proposal did not commend itself to the 
leaders of the Revolution, who started their era from Sept. 22, 1792, because 
it was the day of proclamation of the republic, and in this year (leap year) 
Sept. 22 was the day of the autumnal equinox. 

The era of the French Revolution has gone the way of other eras, and 
a modem world should be guided by less sentimental and more scientific 
reasoning. The question should be thoroughly discussed amongst astronomers. 
The Julian era, invented by Joseph Scaliger (1640-1609), satisfies some of the 
requirements of a universal era and is used by astronomers for continuous day 
reckoning, but its starting point, Jan. 1, 4713 B.C. (—4712 A.D.) is too far 
back in time. 

Gondueiom 

Let us now make our final suggestions regarding calendar reform: — 

(1) The Universal Calendar should not aim to interfere with the religious 

life of the various communities, but should be strictly a calendar 
for economic and scientific purpose for the whole world. 

(2) The different communities would be free to insert in them their 

particular religious or national calendars as best as they can, 
but persuasion should be brought upon them to reform these 
calendars on a rational basis. 

(3) The Universal Csdendar should start at some point of time which is 

astronomically well defined, e.g. the starting point used by 
Julius Scaliger or 1260 A.D. as proposed by Laplace. The 
Christian era, or the Nirvana era, or eras associated with some 
notable personality or some great event in a nation’s life should 
be given up. 

(4) The Universal Calendar should have months, and weeks, and the 

first day of the year should fall on the day of the winter solstice. 
The year would then end with the Christmas Eve; in other words, 
Christmas and New Year’s day would be one and the same day. 
The corresponding festivals of the 'Persians, the Jews, the 
Hindus and the Chinese would 'fall on the same day. The old 
Roman names for months should be discarded for a rational 
terminology, e.g. Spring 1, 2, 3; Summer 1, 2, 3; Autumn 1, 2, 3; 


akbab’s tomb at sikanbaba and its histobioal beminisoenoes 103 

Winter 1, 2, 3. We may continue to call them by the Boman 
names January, February, etc., but the new January should 
start &om winter solstice day in the Christian countries, 
other countries may have their own names (e.g. Hindus may 
bo allowed to use Magh in place of January, Jews Dhabitu, etc.). 
(G) For the rest, the principles underlying the 12-month perpetual 
calendar may be adopted. • 

If these views are adopted, the year would begin on the W.S. day which 
would bo a Sunday, in the month of Wi (first winter month) or January or 
Magh in India. Then V.E. would fall on the 28th day of Wa (March — Chaitra), 
two days earlier than the end of the month, but at the beginning of spnag. 
This is because the interval between W.S. and V.E. passage is 89^ J'*. The 
S.S. would fall on the 30th of Sa (third summer month, June — Asha^a), 
and the A.E. on the 1st day of Aj (first month of autunm, October — Kartik). 
The religious festivals of difierent nations, which were originally fixed on these 
days, may again be brought back to these days with a little persuasion. The 
other festivals would continue to follow the sun and the moon according to 
whims or tradition of religious bodies. 

The festivals which ore associated with certain dates, e.g. July 4 with the 
Declaration of Independence by the United States of America, July 14 with 
the storming of Bastille in France, Oct. 6 with the shooting of Father Gapon 
and his associate by the Czarist troops may retain these dates unaltered. 
There would bo only one year of confusion, but we would have a convenient 
calendar, based on science, and tending to the final imity of mankmd. 

I wish to express my indebtedness to Prof. P. C. Sengupta for useful help 
and discussion. 


AKBAR’S TOMB AT SIEANDABA AND ITS HISTORICAL 

REMINISCENCES 

By 

' Db. S. K. Banebji, Reader, Lucknow University 

One of the most important monuments of Jahangir’s reign is the mauso- 
leum raised on his father’s tomb. Fuhrer,^ believing the statements of Finch 
and Hawkins,® has assigned'its foundation to Akbar. The former of the two 
travellers writing in 1011 considered the work in progress for ten years and 
noted its incomplete condition and the latter writing in 1612 stated that it 
had already taken fourteen years in building and would take another seven 
years. Thus according to the former its foundations were laid in 1601 and 
to the latter in 1599. The two travellers had arrived in India m Jahangir’s 
reign and were not present at the time of its foundation. Though some 


J Fuliror: The Ancient Monuments in the NiW.P., Vol. II, 77. 
2 See Foster; Early Travels, 120 and ISO. 


104 


‘ B. 0. IiA^7 VOLUME 


Tvrnaiitn rulois had erected their tombs in their lifetime, there is no such record 
for Bahur, Humasnm or Akbar. Wo also linow that in the last years of his 
reign, Akbar had not built any costly building except the Baland darwasa 
the addition of which proclaimed his hold over North India and the now 
conquests in the south. Wo also know that ho had not constructed any costly 
mausoleums after tho death of his dearest friend, Abul Bazl, his two sons, 
Murad and Panyal, or his mother, Mariam Makani. So wo may o priori 
conclude that he had not spent any largo sum of money over his own tomb oven. 

There are also positive evidences that the building — at least tho greater 
part of it — was constructed in Jahangir’s reign. Lot us first of all quote 
Jahangir’s own words. Ho says,^ 'I had wished that my father's tomb should 
be without a parallel in tho world. While the constructions wore gomg on, 
Khusrau’s rebellion took me to Lahore and tho architects had built in their 
own way, so that a fairly largo sum had been spent in tho last tlirco or four 
years. Now (i.e. on the 28th of October, 1608), I ordered that tho masons 
after consulting the wise men should reconstruct some portions of it and by 
degrees a lofty building came into existence.’ It is clear from this quotation 
that the work had been going on for at least throe years and tho mention of 
the fourth year is made as the third year of his reign had been completed at 
the time of his writing 2; it was his ambition to raise an \mparalleled building 
and he regretted the interruption due to KLusrau’s rebellion. 

Many eminent writers have maintained that the foundation of the mauso- 
leum were laid by Alcbar himself. We have already mentioned Fuhrer to be 
one: the others were Forgusson,^ Havoll,* Latif.® Vincent Smith® and 
Professor Talukdar are in favour of Jahangir being its builder. P. Brown 
is undecided between tho claims of the father and the son.® Tho considera- 
tions that weighed with the former writers were : 


(1) that the rulers themselves buUt their tombs and spent large sums 
on them and any negligence on their part to do so was niggardly 
made up by their successors, and for filustration have quoted 
the fates of Shah Jahan, Salim Shah Sur, Abul Hasan, the last 
ruler of Golconda, and Silmndar Adil Shah, the last ruler of 
Bijapur. Tho statement is not whoUj’ true, for Jahangir’s 
mausoleum buUt after his death is a costly edifice and the same 
might be said with regard to Tughluq Shah, Eiruz Tughluq, 
Sayyid Muhammad Shah, Buhlul Lodi, Sikandar Lodi and 
Humayun the Mughal. If Babur had no such costly tomb it was 


^ See the Tuzuh-i-Jahanqin, Vol. 1, 162. 

■* He had ascended the throne on the 24th of October, 1606. 

History of Indian and Eastern Arehiteclure, Vol. n, 298. 

6 ArcM^ure, 176. 5 Agra. 168. 

^ History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, 180. 

Januar^m 4 tuUder of Akbar’s Jomb’ in tho Journol of the U.P. Historical Society, 


8 See the Cambridge History of India, TV, 649. 


akbak’s tomb at sikakdara and its histobioad reminiscences 106 

bocauso there was no available space to raise a large edifice on 
the slopes of the bill called the Sbah-i-Kabul or the Sher 
darv'aza,! where Babur had desired to be buried after death 
and Aurangzib was also denied the same honour because of his 
own instructions to his children. In the case of Akbar his 
successor, Jahangir, 'was eager to perpetuate his father’s 
memory by an unparalleled edifice; 

(2) the peculiar pyramidal shape of the mausoleum, the- only other 
building of its typo being the Panch mahal. The writers are 
unable to associate any other Ifiug hut Akbar with such buildings 
of unusual type. 

Actually it is one of Jahangir’s works, who had commenced it immediately 
after accession, spent a largo sum of money before he discovered in October 
1608 that it was not built in accordance TOth his plan. So he ordered -some 
portions to bo pulled down and then in another five years completed it. The 
garden itself had existed from Akbar’s time as is evident from the construction 
of the walls in two stages. 

Agauist Jahangir’s own statement, it is not wise to assume that Akbar 
had planned the building and laid its foundations. In his last years, various 
events had saddened Akbar and ho was leading a lonely and morose life and 
felt little interest in tombs. The person who with all his might and glory 
was fairly humble in character 2 and who had raised no large edifice on tlie 
tombs of any of his relations or firionds, may not be expected to take interest 
in his own. 

Lot us describe the mausoleum. It lies in the Sikandara village some six 
miles north-west of Agra in the midst of a garden 3^ furlongs square. The 
garden walls are 24' high and battlemented at the top; at each angle there is 
an octagonal battered bastion 43' high, surmounted by a small domical kiosk 
and between the bastions there wore other towers. The chief entrance is 
through a high gateway in the middle of the south wall and there were other 
smaller entrances through the east and west walls. The arched edifice on 
the north corresponding to the south gate or those in the middle of the east 
and the west sides are false gates. Bdmund Smith ^ draws our attention . 
to the fact that the surrounding walls were built in two stages and mentions 
that the lower stage, 12' 9' in height, was biiilt by Akbar and that the upper 
stage was built by Jahangir when it was discovered that the passers-by, 
mounted on elephants, could notice what was going on inside the enclosure. 

• From the south entrance gateway a raised causeway, 75' wide, leads to the 
► mausoleum, situated in the middle of the garden and there are similar 
causeways leading to the three other blind gates. In the centre and at its end 
the causeway broadens to contain tanks and fountains. 

. ^ Babur’s tomb is on tbo 14th torraco of tho hill. 

2 As some of his sayings on pp. 38G, 387, 388, 394, 396, 398 and 399 of the Ain-S-Ahbari 
prove. They are too many to bo quoted. 

2 In his monograph on Akbar’s tomb, 7. 


106 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


The mausoleum itself measures 339' square standing on a platform 496' 
square and has five storeys, each successive storey gradually lessening so that 
the whole looks pyramidal in form. There are numerous kiosks on each 
terrace and the alcoved entrance to the building is raised higher than the first 
storey and corresponding constructions have been made on the other sides. 

The mortuary chamber lies below the ground, measuring 40' square, and 
is covered by a dome 60' in height. Origiually the chamber was adorned 
with paiutiugs in colour but now the whole has been whitewashed and looks 
severely plain. Subdued light is admitted by small openings high up the wall 
and the entrance to the chamber is by a dark passage, lO.'i' in length, the walls 
of which ‘are finished in polished stucco ’. 

The entrance archway to the building is of considerable height and reaches 
the fourth fioor. Its noble pendentive and architrave in black and white 
marble, the abutments in mosaic panels and the marble kiosks with decorations 
in the Maltese crosses make it an impressive adjunct. 

The mortuary chamber is surrounded on the ground floor by cloisters 
which are provided with an octagonal tower at each angle. Adjoining the 
southern entrance on the two sides are the cloister bays which have been en- 
closed to contain the tombs of some Akbar’s daughters and of Sulaaman Shikoh, 
Shah Alam II’s son, and his wife. The excellent marble, its arabesque tracery, 
the beautifully carved Quranic texts, the rosettes and the floral ornamentations 
of the upper tiers of the plinths of the tomb, attract the attention of a visitor. 

Each storey lessens in area, e.g. the ground floor occupies 339', the first 
floor 182' 7*, the second 109' 8", the third 88' and the top floor 87' 7', in each 
case the corridors surrounding the floors bemg included. The last has an open 
terrace and a raised platform 38' square evidently meant for a domed kiosk 
over the cenotaph. Both Eergusson and Smith think that the building 
without the dome looks truncated, as here the four comer towers overlook 
the central terrace and we know that according to the Muslim artists the 
centre of a building should be its highest point. 

The southern vestibule on the ground is cruciform in shape and elaborately 
decorated; the ceiling is groined andjn its centre is an exquisite medallion 
with a sunflower in its centre surroxmded by a gilded arabesque scroll on deep 
blue ground, the outer edge being in red. The lower portions of the walls 
are covered with geometrical dados. There are other ornaments, illuminated 
Quranic verses and representations of plants on the two sides of the vestibule. 
Altogether the vestibule and its entrance with its jali work are gorgeous 
examples of Mughal ornamentation where every decoration is in order and 
eloquently proclaim the taste of its founder, Jahangir. 

Not only are the Maltese crosses noticeable on the north pavilions at the 
top of the entrance archway but there are other kiosks with Hindu domes 
on the lower terraces. Even' the profuse decoration is in accordance with the 
Hindu spirit of architecture. 

The sarcophagus of the emperor in an underground crypt measures 13' x 8' 
and is comparatively plain. It was desecrated by the unruly Jats in the 



akbar’s tomb at sikandaba and its HISTOBIOAL BBMINISOENOES 107 

oighteonth century who scattered the bones of the dead emperor and it is 
possible that the original stones were as gorgeously decorated as the rest of the 
building and the present tomb is only a poor substitute set up by his indigent 
descendants of the eighteenth century. 

The glory of the mausoleum lies in its top floor. In contrast to the red 
sandstone, of the lower terraces, the topmost one and the two staircases leading 
to it are of marble. The open floor, 70' square, made up of a variety of stones 
contains in the middle an exquisite cenotaph, 6' 10' X 2' 7' x 3' 3' inscribed with 
ninety-nine names of Allah and at the head and foot are carved the words 
Allaho-Akbar, ‘God is Great* and Jalla-JalaluhH, ‘exalted be his glory’, sur- 
rounded by the most delicate floral ornamentation. Edmund Smith points 
out that among the flowers the lily, the almond and the dahlia ate noticeable 
and concludes from the cloud-forms on the panels that the artists were the 
Chinese. As these flowers and cloud-forms are also noticed in the decorations 
of some of the buildings at Fatehpur,i it is possible that the artists were the 
same or descendants of those that had worked there.^ Even the qalamdan or 
pen-box at the top of the cenotaph is splendidly chiselled in arabesque patterns. 
The butterflies and insects noticed flitting &om flower to flower in the north 
and south panels give a reaUstio touch to the decorations. At the head of 
the cenotaph is a pedestal which used to hold a diiragh or the incense burnt 
in honour of the dead. Altogether the cenotaph attests to the sldll and 
ingenuity of the Mughal artists and maintains the reputation of Jahangir 
as a coiinoissour of art. 

The topmost courtyard is surrounded by cloisters closed on the outside 
by beautiful marble open screens. Their trellis work is marvellous and 
patterns ate numerous in design. As mentioned above, the central area, 38' 
square, of the open floor is raised probably to be covered with a dome. The 
intention was never carried out because on second thought Jahangir probably 
found the open area more suited to an assembly of mourners in honour of the 
dead 8 and the iron rings on the surrounding walls were provided for the 
awnings to protect the mourning audience from the sun, rain, dew or cold. 
The open space was also more in accordance with the active life led by the 
Mughal chiefs in their original homo in Central Asia.^ Jahangir must also 
have remembered Akbar’s venerotion for the sun and his statement when 
Birbal’s corpse could not bo discovered that it was well that sun itself purified 
the Baja’s bones.® It is not possible to uphold the view that the absence 
of the dome was due to Jahangir’s neglect after his marriage with Eur Jahan 
for more than one reason: 


1 o.g. in tho Tur&i Sultonn’s house. 

" ^oro is on interval of 30 to 40 years in the dates of construction of the two sets of buildings. 

3 The absence of tho control dome in the Diwon-i-khas at Fatehpur>Sikri is similarly 

explained. * • 

4 This point has been over>emphasizod by some of the historians. More than a hundred 
years had passed sinco Babur loit 0. Asia for Sobol in 1604. 

t See tho Badauni, n, 362. 


108 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


1. Jahangir must have completed this mausoleum before undertaking 
the construction of the south gateway and the other blind gateways and 
since the former entrance has two inscribed dates corresponding to 1612 and 
1613, it is clear that the construction had continued after his marriage in 
1611 and that the mausoleum had been completed according to Jahangir’s 
plan. 

2. Nur Jahan was a talented lady who, in the years following her marriage 
with Jahangir, was a great help to her husband in the development of art and 
some of the artistic productions of this reign were due to the joint efforts of 
the two.i Such a lady would never have allowed her husband to leave such a 
unique representation in stone as Akbar’s mausoleum in a state of incompletion. 

There are four sets of distiches inscribed all round the courtyard, the first 
one on the west cloisters praises God and the sense of justice that He bestows 
on the kings. One couplet is 

‘And whilst choosing the path of justice, they might look upon strangers 
as upon themselves.’ 

On the south and east cloisters are the praises of Akbar who is wrongly put 
down ascending the throne in 962 instead of 963 A.H.2 Sokne of the verses are : 

(1) ‘He (Akbar) adorned the world with his justice and equity.’ 

(2) ‘At the foot of his throne had gathered eminent men of all nations.’ 

(3) ‘He took kingdoms in war on the first attack and in the twinkling 

of an eye again gave them away to feasts.’ ® 

(4) ‘Whoever took refuge under this throne rose ’ 

(6) ‘His fame filled entirely the world and he ruled for fifty-two years 
with glory.’ 

The verses on the north cloisters regret the faitlilessness of the fate and of the 
world : 

‘Although the age through the justice of Shah Akbar became like the 
highest paradise and although the world was happy in Iris time 
and earth yielded to his rule, unfeeling fate led (him) to eternal life.’ 
Incidently Akbar’s love for Shaikh Sadi’s poems is mentioned. 

Next to the mausoleum, .the noticeable work is the southern gateway 
with its four marble mindrsA It is built in two storeys, is 76' in height, 
137' across and 100' deep and has an open platform in front. There is a small 
arched stone gate, 8' 7" wide, in the middle of the south side of the platform 
which is the only remnant of the railings that surrounded the platform. The 
alcoved archway is 61' high and 44' wide, the spandrels of the bigger arch in 
front and the smaller arch at the back are adorned with rich arabesque scrolls 


* As for example the construction of the Itunaduddaula of Agra or the Shalimar of Kashmir. 
® It is strange that Jahangir made a nustake about the date of accession of his own father, 
s After his conquests Akbar either returned them to the foe as in Bajputana or distributed 
them among his mansabdaxs. 

*• They had been broken by the Jats in the eighteenth' century but were restored in 1906 
by Lord Cuizon's order. 



AKBAn’S TOMB AT SIKANDARA AND ITS HISTORICAL REMINISCENCES 109 

in white and black marble mosaic. The panels of geometrical figures with 
their inlaid borders on the two abutments are other illustrations of the superb 
mosaic work. 

It has several inscriptions, while a few others have been lost. They are 
either too long and verbose in language or mere poetical effusions. It will 
suffice for us to notice the following points about them : 

1. The south facade was completed'in 1612 and the north a year later, 
both being the work of the famous calligraphist, Abdul Haqq bin Qasim 
Shiraz!. 

2. Sikandara was called Biliistabad^ probably after the death of Akbar 
who was entitled Arsh AsMdnl. 

3. All sorts of compliments and titles have been bestowed on him 
among which the title of Sahibqirdn was one. As at the time of his birth 
there was an unusual constellation of stars, he deserved the title even better 
than Timur or the later Shah Jahan. 

4. Akbar died on the twelfth of Jumdda II, 1014 A.H. (17th October, 
1606). 

6. ‘His empire was safe from ruin because the emperor had no ties with 
the perishable world ’, signifying that his spiritual zeal and not mere worldly 
ambition had strengthened his hold on Ills subjects. 

6. ‘He was by long descent a Padshah, had established the regulations 
^ of pomp and government and under his shelter God’s creatures are at rest.’ 

7. All kinds of hyperbolic praise have been bestowed on Jahangir, e.g. 

‘ho has the grandeur of Darius, the triumphs of Alexander, the justice of 
Naushirwan, the pomp of Sulaiman, the power of the fate, the strength of the 
destiny, the height of Saturn ; he possesses the world ; he is 

• a lord of the happy 9 onjimotion who with regal splendour has carried the 
banner of conquest beyond the heights of Simak’.® How fulsome the praises 
wore will bo realized by those who Imow the defects in Jahangir’s character. 

8. Akbar’s love for the sun and moon was inherited by his son, Jahangir,^ 
also, and this was expressed by the verse 

‘May his (Alibar’s) soul shine like the rays of the sun and moon in the 
light of God.’ 

To conclude: 

(а) Akbar’s tomb is another illustration of the garden-tombs of the 

Mughal rulers and the massive gateway with its four mindrs, 
the noble mausoleum, the broad causeway and the extensive 
garden produce a spatial effect eminently suited to the environ- 
^ ment; 

(б) there are five storeys to the building, a sarcophagus and two ceno- 

taphs, one on the third floor and the other on the top floor; 

J Soo also tho Tuzulc-i-JdhangiH, 1, 249. ® The name of two Bters. 

3 Jahangir writes in tho Tutuk, I, 61 : ‘Honour tho luminaries (tho sun, moon, ete.) which 

aro tho monifostors of God’s light ’ 


llo 


B. 0. IjAW VOIitTME 


(c) the mortuary chamber rises up to the second floor where openings 

have been made in the sloping galleries to allow light to reach 
the chamber; hence the central area of the ground floor and the 
next two floors are hollow and not approachable; the third and 
the fourth floors which are approachable have cenotaphs in the 
centre; 

(d) the numerous kiosks, arcades and balconies have made the building 

look somewhat light and to that extent it has lost its mourning 
outlook. P. Brown, while calling it unsurpassed in delicacy 
and finish, considers it disappointing as it lacks the mass efieot 
and the quality of coherence; 

(c) while the same writer is not sure whether Akbar or Jahangir was 
responsible for the design of the structure, he thinks that the 
latter interposed to introduce modifications in his father’s plan 
more suited to a summer palace than to a royal mausoleum; 
the statement that Akbar had made a plan of the building 
and built some portion is a mere surmise and rests on np solid 
formdation except that the garden existed in the great emperor’s 
time; 

(/) the building has many peculiar features: 

(1) no approach to the centre of each terrace for the three 
lower storeys, (2) the two cenotaphs instead of one, (3) the 
four marble mindrs which are attached not to the central 
mausoleum but to the south gateway, adorned by superb 
mosaic work, (4) the three blind gateways and the small 
openings on the east and west walls, (5) the construction of the 
lower portion of the. mausoleum in red sandstone and the 
upper in marble, (6) profuse use of the various colours which 
have been so skilfally combined that whereas one of them 
alone would have offended the eye, their combination pleases 
it, e.g. the medallion in the centre of the ceiling of the 
vestibule on the ground floor in gold or blue background 
with a red border, (7) the numerous geometrical patterns • 
in the trellis work of the topmost floor, (8) the inscriptions 
which are more or less meaningless, (9) the beauti^l traceries 
on the central and other cenotaphs, (10) the three false 
gates have decorations including representations of the Persian 
jugs and Indian birds and plants. 

(ff) One may be permitted to remark that the parsimonious Akbar 
would have been loth to so lavishly spend on his mausoleum. 
Not only would the plans have been different to make it look 
more substantial but the marble decorations would have been 
mostly avoided. Jahangir, the connoisseur of the lighter arts, 
made the building look original and suited to his taste but 


KALA-AZAR AND ITS CONQUEST 


111 


according to the artists of today, it looks frivolous, a grave 
defect for such a costly and solemn work.^ It is possible that 
in the construction of the tomb he was imitating his father’s 
Panch maTud. But what suited a pleasure resort for the royal 
ladies did not look appropriate to a mausoleum. Jahangir 
fails as an architect though in other branches of art, e.g. painting, 
he was eminently successful. 

(A) Sayyid Muhammad Latif has stated that Akbar was buried with 
his head towards the west.® We do not Imow his authority 
for the statement; if it bo Badatini, then the author has made a 
slight mistake. Wliat the contemporary liistorian writes is 
that Akbar’s orders were for burial of a corpse with his head 
towards the east and feet to the west. Actually at Sikandara 
the head lies towards the north and feet to the south and face 
probably turned to the west, for Jahangir would not deviate 
from 'the established practice of the Muslims at the time of 
his accession when Prince lOmsrau was making a bid for the 
throne. Of course, after the desecration of the tomb by the 
Jats, the sarcophagus did not contain any remains of the great 
emperor. 


KALA-AZAR AND ITS CONQUEST 
By 

Sir Upendranath Brahmachari, M.A., M.D., Pn.D., E.N.I., F.R.A.S.B., 
F.I.A.S., Professor of Tropical Medicine, Carmichael Medical College, 

Calcutta 

Kala-azar was once one of the most terrible of tropical diseases. It is 
due to an infection by a kind of parasites which are allied to those of a peculiar 
boil met with in Delhi and western parts of Asia. It occurs in children and 
adults and is characterized by a high death rate m cases not treated with 
antimony. The disease may last for a few months to two or three years, or 
rarely more. 

It is accompanied by irregular fever and enlargement of i^leen and 
frequently also of liver, a gradual downhill course, with progressive emaciation, 
diminution of white and red cells of the blood, and tendency to bleedmg in 
different parts of the body. It is usually terminated by extensive destructive 
ulceration of the cheeks and gums or some other disease, such as, dysentery, 
pneumonia or tuberculosis. The disease was confotmded with malaria for 
upwards of one hundred years. Eight years ago, I discovered certain skin 

1 Jahangir mentions that ho hod spent fifteen Iocs of rupees firom the royal treasury. See 
the TmvSt^-Jahangiri, 1, 162. 

2 See LatiTs Agra, p. 170. 


. 112 


B. 0. IiAW volume 


manifestations due to the parasites of this disease, which may have a very 
important bearing on the problem of its transmission. 

'^The first epidemic manifestation of the disease in Bengal could probably 
be traced to a peculiar t 3 ^e of fever occurring in Jessore in 1824 or 1826, 
called ‘Jwar-Vikar’, which, Elliot considered, was very similar to ‘Burdwan 
Fever ’ in 1882. Clarke pointed out that ‘there was a disease occurring in Assam 
known as kala-azar or black sickness, from the darkened colour which the skin 
assumed in chronic cases, the ravages of which decimated and in some instances 
depopulated numerous districts in the Garo Hills as far back as 1869. 

The disease occurs extensively in the eastern parts of India, especially in 
the districts through which the rivers Ganges and Brahmaputra pass. The 
provinces of Assam, Bengal, parts of Madras, especially the city, Bihar and 
Orissa, and the eastern parts of the United Provinces are the chief endemic 
areas. Outside India there are endemic areas in certain parts of Ohina, Asiatic 
Russia, Biussian Turkestan, Arabia and Mesopotamia. 

It is endemic in parts of Europe bordering on the Mediterranean, e.g. 
the southern parts of Italy and in Sicily. It occms in Greece, chiefly in the 
islands of Spetsa and Hydra. Isolated cases of the disease have been reported 
from southern Spain and Portugal and from southern France. Oases have also 
been described in Moscow as well as in Vienna and Riga. 

It is endemic in almost the whole of the Mediterranean coast of Africa, 
and recently the disease has been discovered in Kenya Oolony. 

In India epidemics of kala-azar once acquired a home in Assam, but such 
epidemics are unknown in Assam in more recent times due to intensive mass 
treatment of the disease. 

Among the various theories advanced for the propagation of the disease 
are the two following: (1) mfection by bites of infected insects, and (2) infec- 
tion by contaminated food. 

Among the possible carriers of the disease by biting insects may be 
mentioned the flea, the bed bug and the sandfly. • In the case of fleas it was 
once suggested that the' dog flea may be infected by biting infected dogs, and 
in '^e case of the bed bug or the sandfly by biting an infected person. The 
flea and bug theories have now been exploded, though they 'were once regarded 
as most plausible ones, the dog flea being held responsible for infantile kala-azar 
in the Mediterranean basin. More recently, a certain variety of sandfly has 
been regarded to be the carrier of the disease. This theory is based upon 
certain observations that the parasites imdergo some forms of development in 
the stomach of the sandfly. 

For some time there was no other experimental e'vidence in favour of the 
possibility of the infection taking place through bites of infected sandflies. 
Thus Shortt, Director of the Kala-azar Commission, found that esqjeri- 
mental animals, subjected, in thousands of experiments, to bites of sandflies 
known to be infected 'with parasites of kala-azar, in no case contracted 
the disease. In his earlier experiments be. found that no Ringlft human 
volunteer could be infected by the bites of even heavily infected 



•KALA.-AZAB AND ITS CONQUEST 


113 


More recently, Iiowever, hamsters and a few human volunteers have been 
infooted by means of infected sandflies. On the other hand, some new 
experiments of Shortt leave no option but to reopen the possibilities of food 
infection wliich was once discarded. Certain experiments on mice also led to 
the same conclusion. It is known that the parasites of kala-azar escape in 
the urine in living form and it is most probable that they also escape in the 
faeces. The obvious line of future experimentation, therefore, is to determine 
the avenues from which living forms of the parasite may leave an infected 
person and how far these forms will exist in various food materials, such as 
milk. 

Clinically I observed years ago that double infection of kala-azar and 
typhoid or paratyphoid is not uncommon. These observations also lead'to the 
conclusion that infection with the virus of kala-azar may take place through the 
intestinal tract by means of food . I throw out the suggestion that an individual 
who has had typhoid or other forms of ulcers in his intestines may be infected 
with the parasites of kala-azar through these ulcers by contaminated food. 

There are, therefore, two lines of investigations for the future : (1) Does 
infection take place through food ? or (2) Does it take place through bites of 
an infected insect, say the sandfly % The recent consensus of opinion is that 
the disease is propagated by the bites of some kind of sandflies. 

The recent discoveries in the treatment of the disease constitute one of the 

/ 

greatest advances in tropical medicine. They have revolutionized our ideas 
about its mortality which has been reduced from 95% to 6% or even less. 
It was doubtless a very great advance in the treatment of the disease 
from massive doses of quinine to that of tartar emetic which was the first 
antimony compound introduced for the treatment of kala-azar by Rogers in 
India, by Castellani in Ceylon, and by Cristina and Caronia in Italy. Soon 
after its introduction, I conceived the idea of using sodium antimonyl tartrate, , 
sometimes called Plimmer’s salt, and the original bottle containing the first 
sample of this compound used by me more than 25 years ago is still preserved. 
Tartar emetic was soon replaced by this compound. 

The next method of treatment introduced by me was the intravenous 
administration of metallic antimony in a state of very fine subdivision, which 
was attended with remarkable benefit. I have pointed out in a paper 
that I read in the Calcutta Medical Club that when injected intravenously the 
particles of antimony are picked up by the same cells in the spleen as those 
that harbour the parasites of kala-azar and thus the two contending agents 
come in closest contact with each other in these tissue cells, and the fight ends 
most remarkably in the complete destruction of the parasites in the speediest 

way. ’)• t 

• The next further advance in the treatment of kala-azar was the introduction 
of certain organic compounds of antimony. The use of these compounds in 
kala-azar infection has been the subject of my research for many years. In 
1920, soon after I had been financed by the Indian Research Fund Association, 
some of these compounds were prepared for the first time in India in my 

8 



114 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


laboratory in the Calcutta Campbell Hospital,’ and I immediately brought to 
the notice of the Governments of Bengal and India and the Governing Body 
of the In dia n Besearch Fimd Association the potentialities of these com- 
poimds in the treatment of Indian kala-azar. 

Early in 1921, in the course of my research, I discovered an urea antimony 
compound for the treatment of kala-azar. Its introduction and my other 
researches on antimonial compounds opened up a new vista in the treatment 
of the disease in India, by means of therapeutic organic antimonials. This 
urea compound I named ‘Urea stibamine*. 

I shall not detain you here with the romance of urea stibamine, however 
interesting it may be. But I recall with delight that memorable night in the 
Calcutta Campbell Hospital at Sealdah when after a very hard day’s work at 
about 10 p.m. in a little room with a smoliy, dimly-biuning kerosene lamp, 
but with Heaven’s light as my guide, I found that my experiments in the 
preparation of this compound were up to my expectations. But I did not 
know that night that God had put into my hands a wondrous thing and that 
this little thing would save the lives of millions of my fellow-men. 

I soon found its toxicity to be low. I gave my first injection to my 
patient with a dubious mind. The results were remarkable. and surpassed all 
my expectations. Feelings of hope, however, alternated in my mind with 
those of depression, as it was a matter of extreme difficulty to prepare the 
compound in its purest state and sometimes I despaired of success. My 
assistants always stood by me in my moments of despair and with youthful 
hopes strengthened my mind. I carried on my observations incessantly at 
great personal sacrifice and not without much inconvenience to the practice of 
my profession as a physician. My first series of cases treated with this com- 
pound were published early in 1922; soon after this, most remarkable results 
were obtained with it by Major Shortt in Shillong to whom I sent the com- 
pound for trial at the request of Col. Greig, Director of Medical Besearch in 
India. 

The Governing Body of the Indian Besearch Fund Association quickly 
recognized its value from the reports of, my oases in Calcutta as well as of 
those obtained from Shortt and other Directors of the Pasteur Institute, 
Shillong, from Christophers, Director of the Kala-azar Commission, from 
medical officers of tea estates in Assam, and from the Government of Assam. 
In Calcutta its value was quickly recognized. Its reputation quickly spread 
all over Assam, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and to more distant places in India, 
such as Madras, Sanawar, Simla 'Hills and other places too numerous to 
mention, and every observer who used the drug was convinced of the great 
advance made by its discovery in the treatment of kala-azar. 

It was introduced, soon after its discovery and after a preliminary experi- 
mental trial, by the Government of Sir John Kerr, as a preventive measme 
against the disease in Assam. 

mile discussing with the Director of the Calcutta School of Tropical 
Medicine the therapeutic value of this compound, soon, after its discovery, I 


KALA-AZAB ASD ITS OOKQtTEST 


115 


pointed but and suggested to him the possibility of obtaining therapeutic 
aromatic antimonials from the Chemische Fabrib von Heyden, the only com- 
poimd of that nature then available in England being stibenyl, and this 
suggestion of mine. was followed by the introduction of von Heyden’s prepara- 
tions into this institution for the treatment of hala-azar. 

Today urea stibamine stands pre-eminent in the treatment of kala-azar in 
India and as a powerful prophylactic against the disease, and I have now the 
supreme satisfaction in my mind that the treatment that has been evolved out 
of my research has saved the lives of millions of sufferers in my country. A 
disease which for centuries was considered incurable, destroyed millions of 
human lives, ruined families, decimated villages and retarded pro^erity in the 
affected parts of India, has now lost its terrors and the sufferings of the 
afMcted Imve been mitigated. Epidemics of the disease have been forgotten 
and the places formerly affected are becoming healthy localities. 

The following extract from the speech of His Excellency Sir John Kerr, 
while bidding farewell to the^Legislative Council in Assam in 1926, shows the 
value of the campaign against kala-azar by mass treatment of the disease. 
His ExceUenoy remarked: ‘We may now say that victory, if not in sight, is 
assured. The progress in the campaign against kala-azar in Assam has been 
phenomenally rapid, and if it continues at the present rate, there is an excellent 
prospect of the dread scourge being brought imder complete control m a few 
years.’ 

The last word about the treatment of kala-azar has not, however, yet 
been said, though we are nearer to it than in the case of any other tropical 
disease. I hope that an antimony compound will be discovered which it 
will be possible to administer with benefit by the mouth, thanks to the progress 
of synthetic chemistry. 

The economic effect of the discovery of the cure of kala-azar must be very 
great in the provinces of Assam and Bengal, and in other parts of India and 
abroad where the disease occurs. 

This disease in its epidemic manifestation constituted, according to Bogers, 
the old ‘Burdwan Fever’ which raged in Bengal in the ’sixties and ’seventies, 
and converted many parts of Bengal into a ‘valley of the shadow of death’. 
Its terrible nature is well described in the following words of a contemporary 
writer : ‘ The devastation, of the epidemic has a very sad tale to tell. Countries 
that once smiled with peace, health, and prosperity, have been turned into 
hot-beds of disease, misery and death. Villages that once rang with the 
cheerfiil, merry tunes of healthful infants, now resound with loud wailings and 
I lamentations. Huts which offered too little space for their occupants, are 
left without a tenant. The skulls of human beings now strew the fields at 
every few yards’ distance. The fell disease has mocked every human effort 
and absorbed in its powerfirl grasp, day by day and inch by inch, every 
blessed spot which once used to be prized for its salubrity.’ 

General Gorgas, speaking in 1914 on yeUow fever control, stated that its 
eradication would command the attention and the gratitude of the world and 



116 


B. O. lilCW VOLTTMB 


the tliipg could be done. Today yellow fever is in full retreat in the Americas. 
The same will one day be said of kala-azar, and it may be hoped that before 
long the disease will be completely banished from India and other parts of the 
world where it occurs. The signs of its retreat in Assam are already within 
sight, thanks to intensive mass treatment with urea stibamine which, at the 
present day, is the most effective prophylactic against the disease. 

That day will be the happiest and proudest day of my life, if it falls to 
my lot to see it. I shall never forget that little room where urea stibamine 
was discovered, the room where I had to labour for months without a gas point 
or a water tap, and where I had to remain contented with my old kerosene 
hurricane lamp for my work at night. The room still remains but the signs of 
a laboratory in it have completely disappeared. To me it will ever remain 
as a place of pilgrimage, where the first light of urea stibamine dawned upon 
my mind.- Let me tell you that this light did not emanate from inside 
marbled halls with crystal doors; and other lights may emanate for the 
well-being of mankind from still more insignificant jmd unfrequented comers 
of the boundless atmosphere of scientific research, where there is pride and 
pleasure to work in the midst of difficulties. 


BUDDHISM IN GUJARATI LITERATURE 

By 

DrwAir Bahadub KbishbaIiAL M. Jhavebi, M.A., LL.B,, J.P 

Asoka chose the rook at Gimar as one of the places for his propaganda. 
Buddhists selected places like Kanheri, Jogeshwari and Elephanta near 
Bombay, for their cave residences. Gimar is in Kathiawad, i.e. Saurashtta, 
the other places are in the ancient Lata province. Modem Gujarat and 
Kathiawad, therefore, had not wholly been ignored by the followers of Buddha. 
However, Brahmin and Jaina infiuence was so powerful on this side of Lidia 
that the religion of Buddha could not eradicate it effectively. Eor this reason. 
Buddhism is hardly referred to in old or even mediaeval Gujarati literature, 
excepting where Avatars (Incamations) are mentioned. ' The Brahmins had 
very shrewdly incorporated Buddha in their list of Avatars, as an Avatar, 
and along with other Avatars, he too is mentioned as one of them by the 
poets. But it was left to the present times to study and bring forward the 
good points of one of the greatest religions of the world and its propounder. 
It began with the late Mr. Narayan Hemchandra, a voluminous writer who 
flourished half a century ago, and who was a devotee of Maharshi Devendra 
Nath Tagore and a companion of Keshav Chandra Sen. He knew Bengali 
uull. Erom Bengali sources he gave us details of the life of Buddha 
{Buddhadeva charUra). A few years thereafter, another Gujarati writer, a 
deep student of different religions, Mr. Monilal N. Doshi, B.A., prepared a 


BUDDHISM nr QTJJAEATI HTBEATtTRE 


117 


Life of Buddha (A.D. 1901) and his Upadesha ■ (A.D. 1912) from various 
sources, and the same were published by the late Bhikshu ATr’hn-nfln.nn.Ti ^^^ -w-lio 
spent his vrhole life in the cause of making literature as cheap as possible. 
Tins was the first systematic attempt of spreading knowledge about Buddha 
and Buddhism in Gujarat. Later, the work was taken up by the Qujarat 
Purataitva Mandir of Ahmedabad, which owed its existence to the inspiration 
of Mahatma Gandhi, when he was residing at Sabarmati. Dharmanand 
ICosambi, who is a student of Buddhism and a scholar of international fame, 
has contributed the largest number of books bearing on this subject. In 
1924 were published the Dhammapada translation from the original with 
notes, in collaboration with Prof. B. V. Pathak, and the Buddha IMd Sar~ 
mngralia^ and AhMdhammaitha sangdho. TJiis was followed by the Samddhi- 
marga and Bauddhasau^hno Parichaya (1926). H.H. The Maharaja Gaekwad of 
Baroda had invited Prof. Dharmanand Kosambi to deliver a series of lectm^s 
on Buddlia in A.D. 1910. Based on the subject matter of that series and on 
other materials he gave to Gujarat his Buddha Charitra in A.D. 1937, a book 
which till now is the final work on the subject. The Jain Sahitya Prakashak 
Samiti of Ahmedabad published this book. Id between Gujarati poets were 
trying their best at versifying the salient incidents in the life of Buddha. The 
late Kavi Botadkar had in simple but pathetic lines versified the Betum 
Home (Grihagamana) of Buddha, and the late Mr. Narsinha Bao Divalia, 
one of the best lyric poets of Gujarat, had begun to' turn his attention to this 
fascinating topic. 

On 18th May, A.D. 1924, Buddha Jayanti was celebrated on the Sea-Shore 
at Juhu, a suburb of Bombay, where Gandhiji was staying at the time. He 
took part in the proceedings and verses composed for that occasion were 
sung by little girls giving an outline of the life and preachings of Buddha. 
They were written by Narsinlia Bao. Later, (he Light of Asia by Sir Bdwin 
Amold attracted him and he selected about seven prominent events of his 
life, liTfft the parting from Yashodhara, incidents with Kisa Gotami and SujSta, 
and versified them in lines, which, due to their pathos and sentiment, have 
found an abiding place in Gujarati literature. He has published the collection 
in book-form — Buddhacharit — ^with coloured illustrations and copious notes 
(A.D. 1934). Another celebrated poet of Gujarat, Kavi Nanalal, has absorbed 
the spirit of his life, and still younger writers, who are rising and coming into 
light and fame like Sundaram and TJma Shanker Joshi, have taken to the 
subject as full of possibilities for the exercise of their imagiuation and pen 

have been writing on it. On the whole, modern Gujarati literature has 
dealt with the life of Buddha and his teachings (Upadesha) and there is no 
likelihood of its being neglected in the future. 


1 This work hod passed through tliree editions by A.D. 1930 and it has proved very poptdar. 
It was originally written in Marathi (A.D. 1914) and translated into Qujarati by Nilkontha 
Moshruvala. 


A BASIC TENDENCY OF PRAKRIT LANGUAGES 

By 

A. M. Ghataqe, M.A., Ph.D. 

Compared to Sanskrit, the Pralmt languages show a bewildering variety 
of changes in their phonology, morphology and syntax, and produce an 
impresBion of artificiality by the extent and regularity of such changes. On 
the other hand, we find them used for a vast literary activity with the avowed 
purpose of coming closer to the speeches of the populace. The way to reconcile 
these two positions can only be found in an attempt to trace some fundamental 
principle of linguistic change at the basis of all changes introduced in the 
Prakrits, which would render them more intelligible. 

One such principle we may hope to find in the phonology of the Praloits 
which would make us imderstand how such changes have occurred and are 
made possible. In the whole range of the beudldering changes of sounds, 
both vowels and consonants, which one meets in the Prakrits, there appears 
to be one thi-ng which remains constant and guides all these changes. This 
principle can be briefly formulated as the tendency to preserve the syllabic quantity 
of a word. We may now examine the worldng of this tendency in Prakrit 
phonology to appreciate the fuU extent of its operation and effectiveness. 

The best illustration of this tendency may be found in the changes of the 
conjunct consonants. Thus whether the assimilation observable in them is ^ 
progressive or regressive, the syllabic nature of the word remains in tact. So 
Sanskrit tapta becomes tatta and yatna may change into jatta, but the syllabic 
values of the words are in no way affected. They continue to have a long 
syllable followed by a short one. In fact, a change involved in tapta becoming 
tatta can only be explained by a consideration of the following kind. The 
usual explanation that the first consonant -p-, being purely implosive, was less . 
audible than the explosive second consonant -t- and so it had a better chance 
of surviving as it actually does and assimilates the first, is not the whole truth. 
We find not only the loss of the first mute but also the gemination of the 
second and say that it has assimilated the first. But what exactly do we mean 
by this assimilation ? Obviously it is not that the mind of the speaker regards 
the first stop as a -t- by mistaken identity, nor does his anticipatory movement * 
of -t' satisfies him for the sound of -p-, though this is the starting point of the 
change. If the speaker had known that his inability to pronounce the sound , 
-p- were harmful to the nature of the word, it would have remained a mere 
mistake and would have been duly corrected. What appears to happen 
actually is that the mind of the speaker has identified the essence of the word ^ 
not so much with the acoustic effects of the individual sounds •ma.Tring up the 
word, a feeling for -p- and that for -t- following a short vowel but more with’ 
the sequence of two syllables, a short vowel sound followed by a group of 
consonants so as to render it heavy by position. This essential nature of the 
word impresses the mind to such an extent that it forms the 'focus of attention 
at the time of uttering the word leaving all other constituents vague and 



A BASIC TENDENCY OF FE5KRIT LANODAOES 


119 


unimportant. In other words the syllabic structure of a word is for the speaker 
a distinctive variant while all others are non-distinctive. Once these others 
are freed from the essential nature of the word they have less chance of survival 
and drop out to the extent that they in no way affect the essential nature 
of the word. Thus after uttering the first syllable which is by natm-e short, 
the speaker has a vivid consciousness that it must be followed by a group of 
consonants or more accurately by a long consonant so as to give it its required 
syllabic value of length by position. When the stop is uttered, the choice 
falls naturally on the explosive -t- as clearer of the two and the tendency is to 
lengthen it to satisfy the demands of the preceding syllable and when once 
it is satisfied the speaker has no further inclination of reproducing the other 
elements of the original word. 

The same principle appears to explain more accurately the cases of assimi- 
lation where the original conjunct is made up of a mute and a fi:ioative, a liquid 
or a semi-vowel. When a Sanskrit word like putra becomes putta, or a word 
like tatra becomes tattha, or even a word like satt/a becomes sacca- we are 
accustomed to call the changes as ordinary cases of assimilation and we say 
that the mute assimilates to itself the other sound. But the actual fact is 
more complex. In the first place the Sanskrit orthography does not appear 
to represent the actual sounds of the Sanskrit words in their totality and is to 
some extent responsible for the usual view of regarding them as cases of 
assimilation. It is easy to see that a conjunct like -tr- or ty- is not strictly 
of the same type as -ht- or -tp- where two mutes are involved. While id the 
latter type of groups there will be a syllabic division in the body of the conjunct 
consonant separating the two soimds into two syllables marked by the plosion 
between the two, no such syllabic division is possible in the earlier type. In 
fact -tr~ is nothing but the soimd -t- the explosion of which takes the form of 
the sound -r- and a conjunct like -pi- has the explosion of the mute -p- in the 
form of a lateral sound, ty- would normally be a palatal -t- sound. In all 
these cases the soimd would not be such as can be strictly called a conjunct 
which can be split into two parts the first of which attaches itself to the pre- 
ceding syllable and makes it a close one. In other words, if the sounds are 
exactly what they are written, they would not make position and make the 
prece^g syllable long. That some of the Sanskrit groups were and are of 
this type is evident from the fact that groups' like tr~, pi- can begin a word in 
the language as in irayasva, plavate or tyaga,- But when such groups occur 
in the body of a word they necessarily make position and are always so treated. 
This can only be possible on the supposition that in actual pronunciation they 
were real conjunct consonants and involved a long consonant as the first 
member. In ordinary orthography they were as good as *puttra, *sattya, 
*vipplava and so on. Such a sound of these words can also be inferred from 
the fact that there was no diBFerence of sound in the groups of words like 
sattra and putra though, following etymology, we write aat-tra (from sad- 
and ira) but pu-tra (from pu- and tra). In view of the rules of doubling given 
by the Sanskrit phoneticians, which pertain more to sounds than to writing, 



120 


B. 0. liAW VOIiTJME 


it cannot be imagined that the long consonant in saitra was shortened, and 
we are led to think that the simple -f- in words like pMfra was pmmated. 
A-n<i this is in full agreement with the actual sotuids. Once this thing is clear 
we can see that the change of these groups into Pralmt -it-, -pp- or -cc- does 
not invoLve a case of assimilation but only that of simplification. The double 
consonant is found sufficient for keeping the syllabic structure of the word and 
the following peculiar type of explosion is superfluous for that purpose, with 
the result that it gives place to the normal type of explosion. In short, it 
disappears leaving behind a long consonant. Such a supposition alone can 
explain the change of iy~ to cc- where the consonant itself is palatalized. 

This principle is best verified on a limited type of change like the develop- 
ment of a glide of a sound lilce -6- in words of the nature of Sanskrit tomra, 
amra becoming Prakrit tamha, d/mha, etc. That in a group like mr-, ml- a 
glide sound like -6- is prone to arise is obvious from the physiological point of 
view. It is the natural result of the lack of a very fine adjustment of the 
vocal organs; where the soft palate goes up a moment too soon and gives rise 
to the glide. This same glide is observable in the change of Anglo-Saxon 
slumerian into English slumber and Latin numerum into French nombre. 
Though the two cases are quite parallel as regards the development of the 
glide the change illustrated by English and French shows a vital difference 
from the change in Prakrit. In both the European languages the two members 
of the group (for we must assume an intermediate step where the groups arose) 
are kept along with the glide in the words slumber and nombre, but the Pralmt 
words drop one of the members of the original groups. The preservation was 
possible in the earlier case because the English word has developed a new 
syllabic sound (o) While in French the nasal sound has only nasalized the 
preceding vowel. On the contrary in the absence of both these possibilities, 
in the Prakrits the group of two consonants was all that was needed to preserve 
the syllabic nature of the word and quite naturally the additional sound of 
-r- or -I- was lost. From this it is but an obvious deduction that such a con- 
ception of the essential nature of a word would not allow a group of tliree 
consonants, which is actually the case in PrSkrit. Similarly a conjunct at the 
beginning of a word served no useful purpose for the syllabic structure of the 
word and was uniformly, lost. 

This very principle would explain that striking change of dropping most 
of the intervocahc consonants which gives these languages their distinctive 
appearance. As in -other languages, notably in French, the intervocalic 
consonants became voiced, turned into spirants, and as spirants were rare in 
Ihdo-Aryan, were finally lost. But their loss was in no way detrimental to the 
conception of the word as viewed by the speakers who stressed above all the 
number and sequence of the syllables which were kept in tact in spite of the 
loss of the consonants. As compared to the vast number of words where the 
syllables are preserved, the cases showing the loss of syllables are quite negligible 
^d most of them are simple cases of contraction. It is only when the Middle 

o-Aiyan period is over and the New Indo-Aryan. period has begun that we 



A BASIC TBNDEKOY OF PBSKBIT LANGTIAGES 


121 


find a change in the idea of the nature of the word and the consequent loss of 
syllables accompanied by other changes. 

Most of the vowel changes follow the same principle. It is obvious that 
the diphthongs -ai- and ~au- and the long vowels -c- and -o- are not different 
in their metrical length and following a primitive Sanskrit tendency the former 
are reduced to the latter in Prakrits. But more interesting is the creation of 
two new sounds, the short -8- and -S- under the pressure of the same tendency. 
Ih Sanskrit the long -e* and -o- when followed by groups of consonants preserved 
their long quantity. Thus in a word like vestana or ostha the vowels of the 
first syllables were necessarily long and were so pronounced. But these words 
were in no way different as regards quantity from words with the vowels -t- 
and -tt- with a following group of consonants as in mitra or u$}ra. The qualities 
of the vowels were no doubt different but the metrical value of the words was 
the same in spite of the difference of quantity of the vowels in the first syllables. 
Now the difference between the two can only be about the length of the following 
conjunct consonant. If -c- and -o- were pronounced long in the first two 
words and -t- and -u- were pronounced short in the other two and yet the words 
had the same metrical scheme, it follows that in the first group the first member 
of the group was of a shorter duration than in the second set of words. This 
was jKjssible because the first member of the group in Sanskrit was able to 
show some amount of variation in its length to preserve the quantity of the 
preceding vowels distinct. With the assimilation of the groups in the Prakrit 
stage no such possibility existed and the natural result was that the preceding 
long vowels were shortened. They, however, preserved their distinctive quality 
and resulted in short -S- and -d-. v 

A host of other changes will be found to confirm this principle. Thus 
cases of anaptyxis lUce = siri, sukpna — suhuma, gemination of con- 
sonants like taila — tella, kliata — khatta, dukaJa — dtig^lla, simplification of 
groups lilce varsa = vdm, gatra = gdya and most of the Sandlii rules can be 
taken to illustrate this principle. 

One such change based on this principle is of greater importance in the 
explanation of the morphology and syntax of the Prakrit languages. It is 
the regular alteinance between a long vowel and a short vowel with an anusvara 
after it. Both have the same metrical value and both appear to alternate 
with each other as a purely phonetic variant. Cases of spontaneous nasaliza- 
tion like vayasya = vayamsa, aim = onisa and changes like viihiati — visa, 
simka — sika fall under this altemance. 

This altemance would explain a number of individual words which are 
otherwise obscure. So in Pali akarhsu for akarmh, bddJi- in the sense of bandh- 
*to bind’, siyam for siya as potential third person singular of as-, sirimsafa 
for sarlsrpa, nirarhkatva for *nirakrtvd, the proper name vamgisa which may 
be the same as vdgUa, the form mrhkl probably Sanskrit cakrl, khalurhka from 
Sanskrit kludoksa-, bTiimsamkam for bhlsanaka, sanarhtano for sanaiano and in 
Ardha-Magadhi vikanfhayai for vikatiMte, sawhall for ialmali, ghimm for 
gnsme, samddsa for sarhdarhia and a number of other words. 



122 


B. O. LAW VOIiTJME 


More interesting is the fact that this type of altemance makes a number 
of anomalous constructions in the Pralcrit syntax quite understandable and 
regular. Thus chatnd for the regular cluimarh of the Acc, sing, would explain 
Pali sentences like tattheva nipaiim cliama | ‘she fell there on the ground’, 
bljanipavapamclictmd ( ‘sowing seeds in the ground | 
‘fallen on the ground on the floor of the palace’ which is comparable to a 
sentence occurring soon after disvdna chamain nisinuR I which would make the 
equation of cTiamd and chdmam quite apparent. Similarly often a form of the 
Acc. appears to be replaced by the form of the Nom. because of this altemance. 
So Pali: ima gird dbbJiudiresum | ‘they uttered these words’, Ardha-Magadhi: 
itthl pumam pavvaiyam gihiih vd | . On the other hand the long vowel of the 
Nom. is replaced by the short vowel with an anusvara which produces a 
semblance of a form of Acc. Thus Pali: tarn bhumim rdmaneyyakam I for 
sd bliumi, etc. Ardha-Magadhi : ndsanti appdna pararh ca natthd | or tdranii 
appdna param ca iinnd | . 

Two very frequent constmctions are best explained by this altemance. 
Thus the use of sakJid as a predicate when the subject is Neuter or an Infinitive 
is only a phonetic variant for the regular form sahham. So in PaU: na saTekd 
balimuddhattum I dubbacanaihkimsakhdkdtuye | imcasakkdaglmtamdnma I or 
AMg. sakkd saheurh dsdi kantagd | . Equally frequent is the use of attlid for 
aitham in AMg. to express the purpose of an act. Thus we read appamtthd 
paratflid vd ) or annassa atflid ihamdgao mi 1 . This is probably the real explana- 
tion of the apparent use of the Acc. where we should expect an Abl. which 
ends in -a. Thus Pali: kdlam kdlam bhavd blutvarh I akatam dukkatarh seyyo | 
or AMg. jai param maranam siyd I . 

A further investigation would reveal many such facts both in the mor- 
phology and ssmtax of the Prakrit languages which would find their explanation 
in such phonetic altemances based on the fundamental principle of syllabic 
quantity. That' this principle would also shed some light on the problem of 
derivation can be seen in the explanation of the plural forms of the Neuter 
norms like phaldl or mahui which correspond to Sanskrit pkaldni and madJiuni 
The equation is often denied on the phonetic ground that a loss of a nasal 
should nasalize the preceding vowel and not the follo'wing one as it does -in 
these oases. One can compare the development of the French nasal vowels 
in cases like chanter from Latin cantare or vent from Latin ventus. That as 
in the present case the nasal can nasalize the follo'wing vowel can be explained 
on the ground that it was always kept in its o'vm syllable, and the persistence 
of all the three syllables and their separateness may explain the nasalization 
of the final syllable and not the preceding one. In the parallel cases from 
French, one can see that the nasal nasalizes the preceding vowel only when 
it is followed by another consonant and thus properly belongs to the preceding 
syllable. In other cases we find that Latin amare gives rise to French aimer. 

The investigation of this one principle underlying a number of phonetic 
changes would suggest that in the apparent welter of linguistic changes of the 
Praknts there does run as an 'undercurrent some well-marked prmciple which 



THE EVOLHTION OF THE COHOEFT OF 81BI$A 


123 


cannot be possible in a group of artificial changes produced by granunarians 
and literary men. On the contrary it suggests stroi^ly that it was the result 
of the unconscious tendency of the speaker to value the syllabic structure of 
the word more than anything else. This is probably the strongest proof in 
favour of regarding the Pralirit languages as having a natural origin. Because 
they have been preserved to us only in literary documents they are bound 
to show some deviations from the actual spoken forms on which they are 
based. 


y THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT OF 8EI?A 

By 

De. K. C. Vabadaohabi, M.A., Ph.D. 

In the Philosophy of i§ri Bamanuja we find that he calls his system 
ViSi^tadvaita, and further that he considers the nature of the souls and matter 
to be one of body to the Supreme Divine Being, and also that he prefers to 
call the soul as desa or ddsa. 

Tracing the history of the word 8e§a we find that it has been derived from 
the root ^is: disyaie: that is left or that which is progeny, since it is this 
that is left over after the parent perishes: (Nieukta, III. 2). Though the 
Njetokta of Yaska explains ^esa as offspring (HI. 2),i in deriving the word 
&ivam in X, 17 it traces it to the root iis, meaning obviously that it is happi- 
ness, and therefore ma-hgalam, auspicious and divam. 

The Behad-devatS (VIII. 60) explains desa as that which remains or the 
remainder, not in the sense of the Nirukta but generally all that is left over 
(cf. Vn. 37).2 

The above clearly shows that whatever may have been the general root 
from which this word of technical importance has been derived, it later signified 
that which is left after or produced. The Behadaeahstyaka Upanisad » clearly 
uses this word *desa’ as that which remains not in the sense of progeny but as 
that which is left over: 

Pur^asya pwrmmadaya purnamevdvadi^yate j 

To say that the individuals are the remains or those which have been left 
over is to aflSrm that de§a has not a root that would play the fundamental r61e 
which has been granted to it by later philosophical schools {dardanas). 

Thus we have to drop the meaning normally given to de§a as almost 
id en tical with amde§a;* and seek to give it a meaning that is traceable in the 
philosophical usage to which it has been put by Jaimini and Bamanuja. 

1 The relationship thus stressed leads to the enunciation of the creator-creature relation- 
ship os ground and consequent, as cause and effect. Sesa means a creature, on effect, or attribute 
or mode or port of the Cause, Creator, Substance, or Wliole. Cf. Whitney: Boots, Vesb-tobms 
AND Pbimaby Debtvatives, pp. 173-4. 

* B 9 BADDBTATA, V TTT. 60: Trayantam vaiivadevdrk iu aesastvabdaivataljt parah | 

3 §anti mantra of the Vajasaneyobanisad (ISavasyofantsad). 

* Cf. pariJi$yatet Eatha Up., TV. 3 and V. 4 and atUi^atet Ga2jiT. Up., VIII, 4. 6 . 


124 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


The evolutions of the concept of ‘^esa* at the hands of Jaimini is that 
it is considered to he the subordinate or auxiliary to the main or the fradJmta. 
^esa means an ajhia, a part of the whole rite, and the several parts are inter- 
changeably parts or mains according to the different kinds of rites. Just 
this of relationship is what is realized in our life. It is not always that 
a man remains the main or leader in respect of a ftmction or station in society. 
It happens that under different conditions or circumstances a man may have 
to be just a part of a bigger situation, in winch another person plays the 
r61e of the Chief or Leader, however much he may be eminent in his own 
sphere. It is usually said that an egotistic person is one who would like to 
be in the limelight all the time, even as a wit remarked, ‘In the marriage a 
bridegroom and in the funeral the corpse’. Such is the tragedy of fixing up 
the part ie§a as part at all times or the ied the main as main at all times 
and circumstances. The Bradleyean view of Ethics as the definition of a man’s 
station and duties, no less than his master Hegel’s, is to be refuted because 
they fix the individual into a static scheme of the Absolute, and the dynamic 
is not taken into consideration, not merely because the main or the desi is the 
Absolute. 

The dynamic concept of ^e§a-ied relationship is capable of a wide and 
interesting application even in respect of constantly changing situations which 
is the characteristic of the evolving Society. The main-subsidiary relationship 
is thus a valuable development that departs from the Theory of Remainder or 
Progeny or Greatuieliness. But it is sought sometimes to explain this by saying 
that the root iis could somehow be made to explain this (tfigafigl-bliava since 
the anga is other than the aiigl; thus iesa is that which is other than the 
desi which alone focusses our attention in any dynamic context. We know 
that in the example of firing of a revolver or gun we always consider the last 
term or rather the last overt cause, the pulling of the trigger, as the cause of the 
firing of the revolver, whilst in fact a host of other co-operating circumstances 
have gone towards bringing about the effect. Do we say, however, that the 
last link in the chain of causes is the main and the others subordinate or sub- 
servient to this ? 

Yet this is precisely the meaning implied in the definition of Jaimini 
(Pobv amim S Kt sS, IH. i. 2): ^e§ah pararthatvdt — iesa because dependent on or 
existing for another. Ramanuja when explaining the relation between the 
individual soul and God goes to the extent of interpreting the para in the above 
siitra as God, the Transcendent, the true Other of the individual. In the 
VedSbtha Samobaha, Ramanuja writes: Paragatdtidayadhdnecckayd upadeya- 
fvameva yasya svarvpam sa de§ah para^e§ii The definition of the principal and 
the subsidiary or the subordinate which is said to exist for or do action for the 
sake of that principal or in some way assist it, is not quite clear in Pdbva- 
idMSMSS and hence wliat is needed is that we should be able to define the words 
de^ and sesi in such a manner that there cannot and should not occur the 
reoiprocality in the relationship between the Divine and the human, that is to 
say, the Divine should never be made an instrument or subordinate or de§a. 


THE BVOIiXTTIOlir OF THE CONCEPT OF ^EI?A 125 

SO far as the human goes, for that is to make Gk)d less than the individual. 
One thing has become clear in the course of our above discussion, natnely, that 
icsa means that which serves or subserves another, and is to be considered to 
be always dependent upon or existing for and in that Other, and this should 
certainly not be in respect of other individuals but only to the total. This, of 
course, is very difELcult since considered from the point of society and nature, 
this individual and unique loyalty to the Other, the Divine, may have to be and 
indeed is forced to be via the other individuals in the succession of hierarchy 
of causes and uses. This will show that spiritual philosophy demands the 
unique .direct loyalty to the One Supreme Divine, whilst it may symbolically 
or exteriorly or objectively be expressed in the indirect way through the other 
individuals placed to the comprehension of the individual in his, spiritual 
experience as the terms in the hierarchy of temporal manifestation, higher or 
lower as the case may be. There is thus a supreme demand to understand filie 
truth that the Hegelian system has in objectifyiug Beason or the Absolute in 
the State lost grip with the foundational reality of the individual’s spiritual 
nature as demanding the unique revelation of the Divine-relationship within 
itself. This is the true spirituality or living in the Spirit, the Divine, the Life 
Divine. 

The next step has been taken by some writers that ie§a must be interpreted 
as videsam, particular attribute of a substance and not merely as iestz — a 
dependent or subsidiary. It would mean that vi-de§a-na is that which is not 
the dravya or substance as such, but only its invariable and indispensable 
attribute tlirough which alone we can know the substance but which is not the 
substance itself. This relation will represent the aprtJidksiddha-sambandka 
between the particular parts and the Whole or Organism. The usage above 
stated is possible according to some because they hold that affixes, though 
they alter the meaning of the roots to which they are affixed, can in some cases 
be dropped in respect of meaning whilst the root itself will shoulder the meaning 
of the elided affixes. Thus we have pointed out the word desa in Vedic usage 
really earpresses the meaning of avade^a, whilst in the Sutra-period it denoted 
the meaning of the subordinate or auxiliary and anga or part, integral with 
the whole or the principal or the main. 

The next development shows that the meaning of the word underwent a 
further orientation in so far as it was made to stand for or express the relation- 
ship of creature, effect, attribute, mode, and servant or slave all in one complex 
structure. There seems to have resulted even a confusion due to the root dost 
to control and ordain, and both the meanings were incorporated in the concept 
of desa. 

Thus we find that -in the concept of de^ there has occurred a gradual 
importation of more than one meaning,^ till finally we have the concept of the 

1 One more importotion into this term has to be mentioned. This is the me an i n g that is 
derived from the root A'; to Ke, which is used to denote that the /eya is that which is iyiag; 

mythology Supreme Divine as Sefa and also the Adiiesa is the serpent-couch 

of the Divine: EV., I. 174. 4; iefSn nu ta indra easmSn yonouj VUI. 60. 16; AV., XVIH. 2. 10, 



126 


B. 0. LAW VOLLMB 


Organism versus its Self. It is the soul or puru§a that endows the individual’s 
body with growth, adaptation and mutational possibilities, whose ‘why’ 
has not been answered by any theory of Nature or outer evolution or 
law or chance. Nor is there any possibility of determining the ‘wherefore’ 
of these growths and manifestations or mutations arriving at any end, if the 
end is something of which these organisms and organs are not aware of uncon- 
sciously or subconsciously or superconsciously. The theory of the Unconscious 
is fertile only to a limited extent as in the case of perpetuation and self- 
preservation through the structural memory; but it is incapable of leading to 
the assertion of human evolution into the vaster and wider consciousness of 
the integral whole, even if indeed this Unconscious bo, as Von Hartmann and 
C. G. Jung held it to be, universal. It is the universal lower rather than the 
universal higher'. As to the doctrine of subconscious awareness, it is only a 
fftftling again of the presentiment of the future, anticipation of the future 
organized on the principle of biological memory even like the Unconscious, and 
it caxmot help very much except in so far as it might happen to be the field in 
which the suporconsciousness erects itself in some measure. But it is rather 
a thin field for such a vigorous manifestation as the Superconscious. The 
true and divine ends of man are beyond his present apprehension and yet he 
has faint gleams of the great future — his goal or end through it in his most 
intelligent moments of anticipation; there is at the back of his consciousness 
another light that guides him to his own superb destiny, his true self, his 
supraconscious existence, of which tliis waking life of his is but a remainder, 
however full it may appear comparatively speaking. That does not lose 
itself in the appearance of the unconsciousness, so as to become an automatic 
process which is precisely what we should call the remainder in a consciously 
executed act. Comparing for the sake of clarity the expressions of Bergson 
in this context we may say that matter is that which is left behind by the 
process of change, is that which is registering its uniform beat of fugitive 
experiences, is that which does not permit the full manifestations of the Spirit 
having become an obstructive medium through which it has to pierce through. 
Equally the individuals are remainders in a sense caught up as diverse foci of 
Consciousness, made fugitive in matter as possible forces, when so required, 
to break through into the open life of the Supermmd, or manifest them- 
selves with the increased power and light that belong to it. Then when ' 
Biamanuja stresses the identity of videsa-iita and iesa {Sarlra), where the vUesana 
is a/prtJiaiksiddJuif the meaning of the organic conception becomes clear. Not 
only that, iesa becomes a general concept which embraces both the inconscient 
matter and conscient soul, though the name ‘dosa’ becomes more appropriate 


Of. Vedio Cokoobdaeoe, Bloomfield, p, 936: and Boots, Vebb-fobus and Bbisiasv 
Debivatives, Whitney, p. 174. 


Kafiiopanifadi Ananda K. Coomaraswami, NJ, Antiguaty, Vol. I, 
p. , iwte 8. He tmtes: ‘We hove ebo-wn elsewhere that it is by no means accidentally that 
and. Atlanta are designations both of the World-seipent and of the Brahman. See my 
Angeland Titan ”, JAOS., 66, 1936 and “ Janaka and Yainavalkya”, IHB., XTTT 1937.* 


121 


AMBASTHA, AMBaSThI AND SMBASTHA 

in the case of the conscient soul, according to Sri Venkatanatha.i Thus the 
word 4€sa becomes essentially a technical term denoting the body that caimot 
exist apart &6m the Self or the Divine, who is the ultimate Self of aU souls 
and bodies. 


AMBASTHA, AMBASTHA AND AMBASTHA 

By 

Db. Surya Ksnta, M.A., D.Litt., D.Phil. (Oxon), 

Panjab University, Lahore 

I 

Bhagavata-Puraba X. 43. 2, 4 read: — 

(а) apaSyat Icuvalayapidam krsiao’mbastiiapracoditam I 

(б) ambasthambastha no dehj' apalixama ma ciram || 

Sudar^ana explains ‘ ambasthapracoditam ’ as ‘ hastipakaprocoditam ’ and 
Yallabha ‘ ambasthena samkarodbhavena j&tihinena ’. On (b) Yallabha 
writes: — 

nindayam vipsa | pratilomajo’mbastha iti tasya sabajadosaldrtanenaiva 
tiraskaro bhavati || 

They do not attempt a derivation of the word. The word occurs in 
Papini 8. 3. 97 and is left unexplained by all the commentators except 
Jayanta, who adds in his Padamanjari® ‘ambe tisthaty ambasthah’. He, 
however, does not explain ‘amba’ and hence is of no help in the elucidation 
of the word. Ambastha occurs, in its feminine form, in’ Amara (11. 4. 72f.) 
as a synonym of certain plants and is explained by Ksirasvamin as ‘ambe 
§abde tistiiaty ambastha’. Since the plant {Jasminum auricvlainm) does 
no more live in word than any other plant, the derivation seems void of point. 
A prima facie derivation would be ‘ambayam matari tisthatity ambasthah’ 
and the same is adopted by ^abdakalpadruma for ambastha and by Bha- 
nujidikeiita for ambastha in Amara. But both the ambastha man and 
ambastha plant do no more reside in mother than any other man or plant and 
hence do not, in particular, deserve that name. The real explanation of 
the word may therefore be sought somewhere else. 


1 Of. my article 'SH Ramanuja's Philosophy of Society’ {Vedanta Kesari, May 1943), where 
I have pointed out that there are nine names by wWeh the soul is designated in the Bhilosophy 
of Sri Ramanuja — ^namely, amia, prakSra, vMesajio, iarXra, ieaa, dSsa, kaustubha, iakti, hhagavata. 
Sc§atva is the abiding quality of the conscient and the inconsoient; the consciousness of the 
individual 80 ul.is iesa-bhUyistha—defatiiesatijilStftvam : NvayASiDDHXifjAM'AM (mem. ed.,p. 113) 
disposed as it is towards the Divine the S'e^i. But it is of atomic dimensions also. But this 

is increased to the fullest limit of omniscience when the mdividual soul becomes attuned 
to the Divine through devotion or love that is the fulfilment of its knowledge of Has ie?itm (cf. 
my article on 'Spinoza and Ramanuja — a comporotive study ’). 

2 ombe tisthaty ombotthab I supi stha iti kapratyayah 1 nynpor iti hrasvatvam 1 fimbastlia 
iti sanjfieyaip janapttdaviie?asyo || On Kafiika, 8. 3. 9. 


128 


B. G. I^AW TOI-trSIE 


Brnfrmanni while discussing the words for service and servant in the 
IE. languages, cites, among others, upa-s-ti Uas ‘ be ’), ablii-f-ti (^as ‘be'), 
pari-car-a and es-ana for service and ceta (*ccsta ?), ves-a, du-ta, pari-kar-a, 
j^ri-car-a, pari-car-a-ka, abhi-car-a (Gk. amphi-polo-s, Lat. an-cul-us) fot 
servant. 

To this list- mav be added Cymr. amaeth, ammaeth (*ambaeth), Celt. 
amb(i)aktos meaning ‘husbandman, tiller of the ground’, a cognate of Latin 
ambactus ‘‘a servant’, speciall 3 * one who is sent on a me^ge, applied by 
Caesar to the vassals or retainers of the Gallic chiefs and found in OHG. as 
ambaht. ampaht ‘a servant’, Goth, andbahts ‘a servant’, AS. ambeht, ombilut 
‘a servmit’, ON. ambott, Ice. ambatt ‘a bondwoman, a handmaid’. Walde 
explains ambaktos - as ambi (= abhi) actus = axtos ppl. of (= ^aj). 

It is possible that the Celtic word ambaoth travelled to India as it did to 
other countries and was Sanskritized in the form of ambastha; of this we have 
a striking example in the Sanskrit surahga, which is admittedly the 6k. 
syiinx.s The Celtic ambaeth meant ‘ a sci-vant’ and in the same meaning 
it was applied, in India, to an elephant -driver, a retainer of the samanta. 

There is another possibility. The Hindi word ‘mahavat’ means an 
‘elephant-driver’. It is derived from Sanskrit ‘mahamatra ’ * which means 
‘great in measure’ and is applied to — 

(а) an elephant-driver or keeper; 

(б) a man of high rank, a samanta, the mamartai 5 of the Greeks. 

Now, an elephant-driver is not essentially a man of ‘great measure’ and the 
epithet seems to be a transferred one: from the elephant,® ‘who is invariably 
of large measure’, to — 

(а) an elephant-driver, a keeper; 

(б) the possessor of elephant, a samanta, a man of fort-ime. 

In this it may be compared with ibha ‘elephant’ and ibh-ya ‘deserving or 
possessing an elephant’. And although ‘mahamatra’ occurs in both these 
meanings, the word is not quotable in its primary sense, i.e. an elephant ; and 
this is important. 


1 Indogennanische Forechungen, 1906, pp. 377-91. 

® Vergl. Woiterbuch under v'og®; so Bnigmann, Grundriss, 3. 7; WTutloy Stokes, Urkeltis- 
cher Sprachschatz., p. 3-1; Macbain, Ftymol.' Diet, of tho Gaelic Lang, under ambos; Morris Jones, 
A Welsh Grammar, p. 3; John Murray, Etymol. Diet, of Mod. Eng., 1921. Aceording to Oxforf 
Diet. (TOder ambassador) a compound of Goth, prefix and., anda- and tho Sb. bahts 
Mn^t’. The prefix answers to OHG. ant- (later ent.), Lat. ante, Gk. anti, Skt. anti ‘over, 
against’, bahts ‘devoted’ = bhakta v^bhaj. Details: Dlilenbeck, Got. et. Wtb., 13f. 
s Smskri^tion of Pah and Pkt. forms: Morris, Ac., 1S92, 30 July, 94.95. 

^ “P* fiastraprabatabuddhayo ganika rajaputryo maha. 

rMtraduhitaraS ca D YaSodhara -on it; mahamatreti, mahatl mutra yisam iti samanta maha. 
sammte va hast^ik^yaiix va tallaksanam anusartavyam fl 

e m ® mdisdie Glosse des Mesychios EZ., 38. 4335. 

Vp.AV.m.22. 6: hastfmr^naiiiBusddamatistbSvanbabhQvahl I 

moreptobSl.^'’"*^ superiority either of strength or of position’; superiority of she « 



129 


AMBASTHA, AMBASTHX AND IMBASTHA 

! 

, Ambastha (= ambhas ^-f-stba) is an escact parallel to ‘mabamatra’ 
inasmuch as the word ‘ambhas* (= of large measure = mahamatra) is not 
quotable in the sense of ‘elephant ’ and yet its compound ‘ambastha ’ means 
‘an elephant-driver’, a samanta, a Ksatriya, a mighty fighter. 

That ‘ambhas’ means ‘of large measure’ is implied in the following. 
RV. 1. 133. 6 reads: — 

pi8&figablir§tim ambh^am pi^^cim indra sam mrna | 
sdrvam r&kso ni barhaya || 

Sayana explains ambhi^i : 

. atibhayamkarain ^abdayamanam | bhran sabde | yad va 

atipraviddham ity arthaj) ) ambhrj^a iti mahaTwama f ambhrpajj 
mahinalj (Ni. III. 3. 16) iti tatra pathat || 

Sayapa seizes the vital point. Vedic ambhriji, pkt. ambhana equate with Gfc. 
ombrimos,* obrimos ‘massive’, Goth, abrs ‘strong’, and may be derived from 
ambh-, ombh- or abh-, obh-. The same ambhas (*-bhos) pocui’s in Latin 
triumpus,® Gk. thriamphos (*tri-) meaning ‘across (or thrice.?) the massive ’, 
the prefix tri, Ved. tir&, (?) Lat. trans, Goth, thairh-f-upus (= ambhos, -bhas) 
meaning ‘massive!, beiog an epithet of Bacchus, Dionysos, Mars or the 
victorious general -in whose honour the dance or procession was organized; 
and with- this we incidentally settle the much-debated etymology of the 
English word triumph ^ (= tri-l-umphus, tri-f ambhos, -bhas). 

The same base should now explain Latin omnis from *ombhDi- or 
obhm-, the development of meaning ‘all, every’ being exactly like Gk. pas 
‘all’, IE. *kua-nt = Ved. sva ‘swell’. Connection may exist between 
ambhas 6 and am'ba-ra ‘sky’, abh-ra ‘cloud’, Pahl. namb-nam ‘moist’, uambi- 
tan ‘moisture ’, Lat. nimbus ‘cloud ’. 

And just as.it is customary to divide Gk. ampho, amphi (= Ved. abhi) 
‘around’ into am -{-phi (= Goth, bi ‘around, about ’), so we may analyze Gk. 
obrimos into oH-bri-mos, om-bri-mos, the second element being met with in 
brime ‘anger’, brimos, brimao, brimaino, biimoomai, brimosis; and this at 
once explains tlie Vedic bhr-^Iyate, bhr-^a-ti (Ni. II. 12) in the meaning ‘to be 
angry’ and bhf-nik, ghr-pib and bhr-nik- 

Connection between ambhas, -Hindi ambar ‘a large heap’, Pali ambho 
‘a stone’ and Santali ambao ‘stout, full’, is patent. 

The above discussion yields ambha in the sense of elephant: ambastha 
(= ambhas-f-stha) ’would mean ‘one sitting on the elephant’, i.e. a driver, 
-a keeper or a samanta, a Ksatriya, 

The following paragraphs develop ambastha in the meaning of a Ksatriya. 
Raja^ekharastiri ® in his Prabandhakbia assigns prominent place to hastividya 


^ .Disaspiration by dissimilation. Cp. vidfitfaa, v'vidh ; Wackemagel, Altind. Gr. I, p. 129. 
3 'Details: ferdii^d Johonaon, Ihdogermamsche Forsobungen, 1894, 239fi. 
s Details: von Grienberger, op. cit., 1909, 185S. 

* Variety of deri^ration: Oxford Diet.; 'Wyld, Dmv. Eng. Diet, 
t Details: OsthoS, IF. 4, 139£i., 275S. 

* Singbl Jainagrantluvmala, VI, p. 28. 

9 


130 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


in the list of seventy-two kalas, indispensable for an accomplished Ksatriya- 
kuniara. He reads: — 

tvam grha^a kala^ I kas tab ? likhitam, ga^itam, gltam, nityam, pathi- 
tam, vadyain, vyakarapam, chandaih, jyotisam, 4iksa, niruktam, katyayanam, 
nighaintub, patrachedyam, nakhachedyam, ratnapariksa, ayudlaahhyasab-4 
gajaroM'mm, turagdroMnam, tayob ^iksa, mantravadab, yantravadab, 
rasavadab, khanyavadab, rasayanam, vijnanam, tarkavadab, siddhantah, . 
visavadab, garudam, ^akunam, vaidyakam, acaryavidya, agamab, prasada- 
laksanam, samudrikam, smrfcib, puranam, itiliasab, vedab, vidhib, vidya- 
nuvadab, dar^anasamskarab, khecarikala, amarikala, indrajalam, patalasid- 
dhib, dhurtasabalam, gandhavadab, vrksacildtsa, Iqrfcrimamaniliarma, sarva- 
karapi, va^yakarma, panakarma, citrakarma, kasthaghatanam, pasanakanna, 
lepakarma, carmakarma, yantrakarasavati, kavyam, alamkarab, hasitam, 
samskrtam, prakrtain, pai4acikam, apabhramdab, Icapatam, desabhasa, 
dliatukarma, prayogopayab, kevalividhib etab sakalab kalab diksitavan || 

Accomplishment in the art of driving elephants may bestow the title 
‘ambastha’ on a K§atriya, who is indicated to have received this appellation 
for other reasons in the following statements. 

Dighanikaya (Samannaphalasutta 14, PTS. I, p, 51) enumerates the 
chief occupations as follows : — 

yatha so imani bhante puthusippayatanani seyyathidam hatthSroha, 
assaroha, rathika, dhanuggaha, celaka, calaka, pip^adavika, ugga, rajaputta, 
pakkhabdhio, mahanaga, sura, cammayodhino, dasakaputta, alarika, kappaka, 
nahapaka, suda, malakara, rajaka, pesakara, nalakara, kumbhakara, gapaka, 
muddika yani va pan annani pi evamgatani puthusippayatanani || 

The occupations up to ' cammayodhinab ’ are doubtless those of the Ksa- 
triyas and Celak'd of the list has been rendered by Franke ^ as Fahnentrager, 
i.e. bannerbearers. That the bannerbearers were a class of the Ksatilyas is 
shown below. 

Vinayavijayagani,8 describing ‘ diksamaha writes: — 
prathamam mahgalany astau satupurnab kaladas tatab I 
bhrmgaracamarachatravaiiayantyas tatab kramat il 
padapithanvite ratnasvarnsimhasane tatab i 
tat^b prthak sastadatam anarohebhavajinam || 
rathanam astrapurnanam dhvajaghan^valisprsam 1 
pradhanapurusanam ca pratyekam datam asteyuk || 
gajadvarathapadatyasainyani ca tatas tatab I 
sahasrayojanottungo dhvajo dhvajasahasrayuk |] 
khadgagrahab kuntapithaphalakagrahinas tatab I 
hasyadikarakab kamdarpikad ca sajayaravab il 
ugra bhogad ca rajanyab Natriyadyas tatab kramat 1 
sam caranti tato deva devyad ca svaminab purab II 

^ Dighanikaya ubersetzt, pp. 52 - 63 . 

® LokapTaka4e Ealalokapraka4ah, p. 436. 



131 


AMBAS?HA, AMBASTHl AND IMBASTHA 

The raising of Lidradhvaja, decked out with thousands of small banners, was 
an important featme.of the battle in ancient times; so much so that its raising 
was enjoined on Icings by the author of Samarahganasutradhara,i who says: — 
suranam arthasiddhyarthaip vadhaya ca suradruham | 
yatha iSalcradhvajotth^am praha brahma tathocyate || 111 || 

* « ♦ * # « 
ittham ^akradhvajotthanam krtam rajno jayavaham I 
paurajanapadanam ca ksemarogyasubhiksakrt [| 147 || 

The above authorities imply the raising or carrying of dhvaja by a parti- 
cular class of people, presumably the Ksatriyas; the Vailchanasagrhya .2 defines 
the carrying of dhvaja as one of the occupations of the Ambasthas (X. 12 ): — 
amba|thah kaksyajivy agneyanartako dlivajaviOTavi ceti || 

A slight change of v into y (-vi — 3 ^) explains the difficult word -viiravi 
and enables us to postulate that the Ambasthas were Ksatriyas and their 
chief occupation was the carrying of banner in certam ceremonies and in the 
battlefield, preferably on the back of an elephant. 

The statement of Manu (X, 43-44) that Paunffi’as, Au^as, Dravidas, 
ICambojas, Yavanas, ^akas, Paradas, Pahlavas, CSnas, Kiratas, Daradas, 
and Blha^as were originally Ksatriyas, who, later on, became Sudras, owing to 
non-observance of Vedic sacrifice is an historical truism and may, with equal 
force, apply to those other tribes who, being situated on north-western frontier, 
could not properly perform the prescribed Brahmanical ritual.^ To the 
mid-Indian Aryans these were Aryans only in name. Among such jfi.ti-aryas,^ 
taken in a slightly diflFerent sense, the Jaina Upanga b mentions Ambasthas: — 
se kim tarn jatiariya ? chawiha pannatta | tarn 
Ambattha ya kalimda videha vedamaiya I 
. Hariya vamou 5 i& ceva oha eya ibbha jatito 1 se jatiariya || 

It was probably tliis type of tribes, about whom Kautalya says in Arthasastra 
(XI. 1):- 

kamboja saura^^ra ksatriyasrenyadayo varta^astropajivinah (licchivika- 
VrjikamaUaka inadraka kukurakurupancaladayo rajasabdppajivinab) II 
These jatiaryan Ambasthas were ever associated with warfare and are 
e 3 q)Ucitly stated to be Ksatriyas by Nagesa on Patafijali-l-Papini (II. 4. 62) : — 
Pat. ambasthyah striyab | sauviryalj striyab II 
Blaiyata: ambasthyapatyani bahvya^ striya iti vrddhetkosalajadan- 
nan il 

1 King Bhojadeva, Vol. I, Oh. 7, 9-147. 

I s ‘dhvajablwto dSsayoDil;’. Moskari on Qautamadbarmasutra 20. 4. 

3 Vi^tya oonununitiea, called White Indians. Details; n»y Introduction to Kathaka- 
Saipkalana, pp. ad 

4 Op. Pat. n. 2. 6 : 361, V. 1. 116. 22: 

tapat 4rutai}i ca yoiui ca etad brabmapakarakam I 
tapalifirutabbyaip yo hlno Jatibrabma^a eva sab || 

Vasi^^basmrti HI. 7 ; avratanSm amantrariaip jatimatropajlvinam, etc. Cp. also Vyasa- 
smrti 4. 39-44. For the traditional interpretation of jatiaiya op. Jacobi, 2ID3IQ. 60. 316. 
s See 'VVreber, liid. Stud., XVI, p. 309. 



132 


B. 0. IiA,W VOLUME 


Nage^a^: amba§thasyeti ksatriyanamedam I ato va namadlieyaayeti 
vrddjiatvam 1 ambasthasyeti pathe tu samyag eva || 

To sum up: Ambastbas ■were Ksatriyas; tbey lived on vrarfare, presum- 
ably as ‘gajarohas’ and bannerbearors. 

Till now we have based our discussion on ‘ambbas’ meaning massive 
(=; elephant) and have taken ambastba to mean ‘one sitting on elephant , 
i.e. a driver, a Ksatriya. But ambhas in its cognates also means strength, 
power’; taking ambhas in this sense, we may analyze ambastha as ‘ambhas 
tisthaty asminn iti’, i.e. ‘one in whom strength resides’, i.e. a K^triya, 
a fighter. 

In the latter analysis ambastha may be compared with ugra : — 
ambastha ugra 

(1) ambhas = power, strength; (1) terrible, an epithet of Indra in the 

(2) ambastha = a "Ksatriya, a fighter; "Veda and of tejas, etc. in Pali; 

(3) a mixed caste. (2) a Ksatriya, a 6repi, a samgha ; 

(3) a mixed caste. 

Pick* has detailed the confusion and conflict regarding the origin of ugra, 
a mixed caste; no leas confused and conflicting are the statements regarding 
the origiu of ‘ amba§tha ’ . This is typified in : — 

[а) bxahmapad vai^yakanayam amba^tho nama jayate (Mann X, 8). 

(б) vipran mnrdhabhi^iktas tu ksatriyayam ajayata I 
vaiSyayaipi tu tathambastho nisadah Sudraya tatha |) 

(Vrddhaharitasmrti "VII. 151.) 

(<j) viprad vai^yayam ambastha^). kakgyajivy agneyanartako dhvaja- 
■vi&avi ^alyacikitsi (Vaikhanasagrhya X. 12). 

This is accepted by Amara, ^abdaratnasamanvaya (Gaekwad Series 
7. 12), Kalpadrukosa (202. 5) and Trikapda^e?a, etc. 

Against these cp. : — 

anulomSk anantaraikantaradvyantarasu jataj^ savarnamba^thogra- 
nisadadausyantapa3;asav&^ j| 

( =s Gautamadharmasutra IV. 16 sssYajnavalkya I. 91-96, 
quoted by Bhattoji (Manorama) on Papini IV. 1. 126.) 

Maskari -snrites on it: — 

« 

ksatdyepanantarayain jata^ ambai^thak vai^yenanantaraySm jata^ 
ugrah i| 

As in the case of Ambasthas and IJgras, so in the case of Yavanas® and other 
mixed castes the authorities greatly differed. This shows that the real origin 
of these castes had long been forgotten, and their systematization into caste 
system ^ by Manu and others was an attempt at assimilation of these castes 

1 Already ia Jama works: ‘deni Gteschleohte naob die Ikfvskui, VidehaS, HaxiS, Amba$(h86, 
Jfiatai, KuruS, Vtiiiivmi51aS, UgraS, BhogaS, RSianyag, und andore’. Jacobi, ZDMQ. 60. 316. 

® Eestecbiift M. Wiatenutz, pp. 279-286. 

s Cp. Manu X. 43-44 with Gautamadharmasdtia. 4. 21, paraSavayavanakarapaiiid]^ 
findrety eke. On this Maskari writes: kgatriyao ohudraygip jS,to yavanat* 

* Betails: Oldenberg, Zur Geschicbte des indisdhen Kastenwesenfl. ZDMG. 61. 277ff. 



. ambastha, ambasthx and smba§tha 


133 


into Hindu fold, tlie nature of their origin being chiefly concocted in the light 
of the position they held in society at that time and the occupation they 
happened to foUovr in that period of flux and reflux. 

Manu assigns a low status to the Var^asamharas and, accordingly, they 
i. are placed in ^udravarga by Amara and others. 

Manu records the following occupations for the Varnasanikaras (X. 47JGF.) : — 
Butanam aSvasarathyam ambasthanam cikitsanam L 
vaidehakanam.strikaryam magadhanam vanikpathalj || 
matsyaghato nisadanam tva§tis tv ayogavasya ca 1 
medandhracuncumadgunam aranyapa^uhiinsanam || 

Now, occupations like driving horses and service in the woman’s apart- 
ments may be contemptuous, and it was probably on that account that these 
were assigned to the Varjgiasamkaras, but the occupation of medicine was not 
so-. It was, on the contrary, a profession of honour, so much so that admission 
into it was restricted to the first three variias in the words of SuSmta (11. 1-2) : 
athatab- liisyopanayaniyam adhjrayam vyakhyasyamab I brahmana- 

ksatriyavai^yanam anyatamam 6isyam upanayet | ato 

viparita-gunam nopanayet || 

This is confirmed by Caraka (Sutrasthana XXX. 17): 
tasyayurvedasyangany astau | tad yatha | kayacikitsaialakyam Mya- 
hartrkam visagaravaipedhikapraSamanam bhutavidya kaumara- 
bhrtykam rasayanfini vajikarapam iti | sa cadhyetavyo brahmapa- 
k^atriyavaisyail} || 

Thus, the calling of medicine was reserved for the first three varpas, while 
Manu assigns it to the Ambasthas, a mixed caste, and this contradiction 
demands explanation. 

In Khuddakacatuspada Caraka divides medicine into four divisions: 
bhisag dravyany upasthata rogi padacatustayam || 

Medicine (like a cow; so metre) has four feet: doctor, medicines, nurse and 
patient. It is possible that the glorious office of doctor was reserved for the 
first three var^as, while the duties of a nurse were assigned to the Ambasthas. 

Thei*e is another possibility: the science of medicine consists of medicine 
and surgery. Among present-day Hindus the first is virtually reserved for the 
first three var^ias, while the latter is practised by the people of low castes.^ 
It may have been so even in Mann’s time, as it was definitely in the time of 
Vaikhanasa, who puts do^vn siugery as an occupation of the Ambasthas. 

RajaiSekharasuri 2 places hastividya along with asvavidya, and so the 
two are coupled by other authorities. Manu (X. 47ff.) assigns aSvasarathya 
* to the stitas, but leaves hastisarathya unassigned, while Bhagavata (X. 43. 2, 
4) puts it down as an occupation of the Ambasthas. 

1 Cp. also Voai^hasmfti HI. 4: 

luiifg bralunano bha-rati na va^ no kuSUavab | 
na 4udrapresanaip kurvon no steno na cikiisakab II 

Here cikitsa is definitely put do\m os something detestable. 

* Cp. the list of 72 kalfis referred to above. 


134 


B. 0. LAW VOIiinsiE 


Such an omission in Manu may be serious and I would explain it by 
nfl piiTTiiTig the original reading of Manu (X. 47) to have been: 

shtanam afivasarathyam amba§th5.nam ca hasfinom H 
A change of ‘ca hasfcinam’ into ‘cilritsanam’ ^ is conceivable and the motive 
for such a change is not fax to seek,’ The Ambasthas of Bengal, called Amba- 
atha Valdyas, have a leaning towards medicine j they have materially advanced 
through medicine and agriculture. Now, the occupation of elephant-driving 
set by Manu for the Ambasthas may not be liked by them after their material 
advancement, and it is feasible that they turned this profession of contempt 
into one of status by effecting a change of *ca liastinam’ into * cikitsanam’. 

n 

The interesting history of ambhas-fambastha continues in the following 
paragraphs: — 

Amara enumerates the synonyms of 3 ?uthika {Jasminum auriculatum) 
as follows: — 

(а) ganika y&thikamba&tha sa pita bemapu^ika 1) 

(б) Coming to pS-tha (Stephania hemandifolia) he says: 

pathambastha viddhakan^ sthapani ireyasi rasS. | 
ekasthila papaceli pracina vanatiktilca || 

(c) On cahgeri {Avxcdu carioulata) he reads : 

oahgeri cukrika danta4athS>mbasthamlaloinikS. || 

No commentator has, offered any explanation worth the name of the word 
amba§tha and the word invites discussion.. 

To start with : we may analyze the word as ambhas+stha and not amba-j- 
stha as proposed by some commentators, ‘ambhas’ means water, but the 
three plants in question have no more to do with water than many other 
plants and so the derivation from ambhas in the sense of ‘water’ may be void 
of point. 

Ksirasvamin, the commentator on Amara, quotes a tnmm in the begin- 
ning of Vanausadhivarga: — 

rasaviryavipakebhyo mulat puspat phalad dalat | 
akarSd de^akalader vanausadhyartham mmayet || 

It means that the names of plants are based on the particularities of their 
juice, strength, maturity, root, flower, leaves, size, locality and time; and 
these are exactly the things on which modem philologists are basing their 
explanation of the Greek and Latin plant-names.* 


* For a fflinilar change in the Veda op. BV. X. 18. 7 = AV. Xn. 2. 31, XVin.-3. 67:— - 

ima nSrlr avidhavat sup&tnir ^fijanena saipisa e&ip viSantu ) 

. ana&dvo anamlv^U sur&tna a rohantn jfinayo y6nim figre ft 
The Pa^ditas changed &gre into agneh in order to justify the system of sat!. 

^ Thisalton-Dyer’s ‘On Some Ancient Plant-names’, Journal of Philology, 
XXXin, 196fE.; XXXIV, 78-96, 2900. 



AMBA^THA, AMBA§THS AND SMBASTHA 


136 


Taking our cine from the above we note that the chief characteristic 
of the plants in question is the sharpness or bitterness either of their smell 
or juice and if we could trace the word ambhas in the sense of sharp or bitter 
we shall have arrived at the correct etymology of the word ambasthfi (= con- 
taining sharp smeU or bitter juice). 

We have already seen that ambhas means 'massive’ strong, and that it 
is cognate of the Gk. obrimos, ombrimos, Goth, abrs ‘strong’. The idea of 
strength could be well evolved in abstract things like smell and juice; and 
this we actually find to have been the case in Gherman ampfer,i OHG. ampfero, 
AS. ompre, all meaning sharp, bitter, unripe; Swed. amper ‘sour, sharp, bitter’ 
all alike going back to ambh, ombh. 

This clears the etymology of the word amba§tha as ambhas-f-stha meaning 
‘having sharp smell or bitter juice’. 

III. Ambastou. 

Before venturing an explanation of the word ambastha we may straight- 
■ away state that ambastha is not a derivative of ambastha or amba§tha and that 
• according to Paifini the two words are basically different. 

PSnini 8. 3. 97 reads: 

ambambagobhumisavyapadvitrikuiSeku^ahkvahgumanjipunjiparame- 
barhirdivyagnibhyah sthah II 

The sutra prescribes that -stha becomes -^ha, when preceded, among 
others, by amba and amba. Now, if Papini considered Smbastha to be a 
derivative of ambastha he ought not to have included amba in the sutra as 
the change of -stha into -sttia in such a derivative would have been implied 
by that in its base ambastha. The distract inclusion of both amba and amba 
in the sutra therefore shows that in Pardni’s opinion the word ambastha was 
frmdamentally different from ambastha. 

The basic distinction between the two words was forgotten in post-Pani- 
nean period and the two words got contaminated thus causing a uniformly 
persistent confusion among scholars, both Indian as well as European. The 
following paragraphs may clear this confusion. 

While discussing the word ambastha we have referred to the principle, laid 
down by KsTrasvamin, which coimects plant-names, among other things, with 
the names of localities wherein they grow. Of this the striking examples are; 
haimavati = himavati jata = haritaki, Terminalia chebula, 
haimavati = himavati jata = vaca, a kind of aromatic root good for voice, 
haimavati = himavati jata = sarvakari, Hindi Mako. 
dravidakal^ = dravidade^e jatah = karcurakah, Curcuma zerumbet. 
magadhi = magadhadese jata = yuthika, auriculatum. 

odrapuspa = odrade^odbhavam = japa, Hibiscus JRosa sinensis. 

feikharikah = sikhare jatah = apamargah, Achyranthes Aspera. 
vaidehi = videhadese jata = pippali, long pepper. 


1 Different derivation: Walde, WTB. under *omo, *6mo. 



136 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


ucBoyain = udici jatam. = kefiambu. 

4aileyain = ^ilayam jatam = a^mapuspa, benzoin, 
kamboji = kambojadeSe jata = masapar^, Glycine Debilis. 

] t5Bniir n.Tn = ka§m1xadei§e jatam = puskaram. 

Thisalton-Dyer i has shown that the Greek Ozainitis is a plant-appellative 
based on Ujjayini, the modem TJjjain; that Persda 2 meant the Persian tree 
which the Persians brought to E^t (Indian dhaturah, Arabic tatourah) 
and that sikda » (bottlegourd) derived its*name from Sicyon, an. industrial 
city, where a minor industry of the products of bottlegourd was in vogue. ^ 

Conversely many place-names derive from plant-names; and Murr^ has 
studied in detail a large number of Greek place-names based on plant-names. 
Among EngliBb place-names derived from plant-names b may be cited Derwent, 
Darwen (Dema = Oak), Lean (OE. limene ‘wa’), Lymn, etc. perhaps Levon 
(from a word meaning elm, cp. Welsh Llwyf, Ir. leamh). Corse (cp,.MBret. 
cors ‘rushes’, Welsh cors ‘bog’, corsen ‘reed’) and Willonghby (OE. welig 
‘wiUow’). 

In India the process was typified in Amravarta ‘name of a mountain’ 
(Ramayapa IV. 44. 23), Amravati ‘a town’ (Ram. IV. 41. 14), Barhismuti 
'a town’ (Bhagavata III. 22, 29) and Amrakuta ‘a mountain’ (Meghaduta 17). 

Buddhists took fancy to amra and they derive the following place-names 
from it: — 

Ambatthala® a ‘ plateau in the Missaka mouUtain in Ceylon ’, Ambadugga- 
mah&vapi’ *a tank in Ceylon ’, Ambagama 8 ‘a village between Vesali and 
Bhojanagara ’, Ambagapa® *a locality in Ceylon’, AmbalalaW ‘a place in 
Ceylon ’, Ambavana ‘a common place-name ’ (for example, a Padhanaghara n 
in Ceylon built by King Kassapa m), Ambavapii® ‘a tank in Ceylon’, and 
Ambasapda ‘a Brahmin village east of Rajagaha ’. 

Mention may also be made of Ambala (= amralaya, a district in the 
Punjab) and Amethi (= Amra-f-sthi, a town in Oudh). 

This shotdd indicate the derivation of Amba^tha: it is a place-name; it is 
based on the plant-name amba. That Ambastha is the name of a janapada 
is fixed by Jayanta on Papini ; that it is derived from amba is attempted 
below. 

amba grass is known to the Kathaka-samhita (XV. 6) : 
somaya vanaspataye Syamakas carur brhaspataye vacaspataye naiva- 
ra6 carur aindraya jyesthaya hayananam ekadasakapalo mitraya 
satyasya pataya ambdnam carur varupaya dharmapaspataye 
yavamayo da^akapalab || 

1 Joutnal of Philology, XXXIV, 78-79. 8 Op. ctt., 87fE. ■ 

® Op. oit., 297fE. 4 Boported by Thisalton-Dyer in op, cit,, p. 303^ 

* Details: Eilert Ekwall in Introduction to the Survey of English Place-names, I, p. 24. 

* Samantapasadika I. 73. 21. 7 Mahavamsa VWTy 33.' 

* Dighanikaya II. 123. 20-22. s Samantapasadika I. 101. 16. 

^havaipsa LXXIV. 68. ii Mahavaipsa XLVm. 26. 

Maha. XLVI. 20. is Digha. H. 263. 3. i* Jayanta on Ka§ika+Papini 8. 3. 9. 


AltIBASTHA, AMBAS1!HZ AKB ZUBA87HA 137 

This corresponds to Taittiiiya-samhita I. 8. 10. 1 : 
mitraya satyayambanam caruin varunaya dharmapataye yavamayam 
carum | etc. 

Sayai^ia explains ambab with'dhanyavi^esab’. 

Fatanjali^ explains amba on Panini 6. 1. 9 and 8. 2. 25: 
tad yatha tubhyedam agne, tubhyam idam agnaya iti prapte | 
ambanam canup, nambanam carum iti prapte | a vyadhinir uganah, 
sugana iti prapte | iskartaram adhvarasya, niskartaram adhvarasyeti 
prapte | ^iva udrasya bbesaji, ^iva rudrasya bhesajiti prapte || 

I have connected ambhas -with *nanibh (*pmbh) and have drawn Pahl. 
namb, nam, kIPers. nem, Pahl. nambitan, Lat. nimbus to *ambh *embh. 
Patafijalii equates amba with namba* and so it occurs in the corresponding 
passages in Maitrayanl and Satapatha: 

(o) mitraya satyasya pataye ixambanam carum varuiiaya dharmasya 
pataye yavamayam carum (MS. II. 6. 67. 9). 

(6) atha mitraya satyaya nambanam carum nirvapati tad evam mitra 
eva satyo brahmane suvaty atha yan nambanam bhavati 
varunya va eta osadliayo yah Icrste jayante’thaite maitra yan 
nambas tasman nambanam bhavati || (iSatapatha V. 3. 3. 8.) 

Harisvamin, the commentator, writes on namba; 
namba nama alqntapacyab svayamjata vrihayah I krstaksetrotpanna 
o§adhayab varupyab karsanadilaksanahimsasambandhad varupa- 
rhab I akistopaoyas tu tadvirahan maitrab il 
Namba is adopted by Katyayanafoautasutra (XV. 4. 12) : 
nambo mitraya satyaya || 

Karka explains namba by ‘svayam jata vrihayo nambab’ and Vidya- 
dhara by ‘.alqstapacya vraiayo nambah 

Thus the equation of amba with namba (*pmba) is established in the 
Samhitas and a janapada could very well derive its name from amba meaning 
‘abounding in amba grass’. 

This solves the puzzle: Panini considers Ambastha and Amba^tha as two 
basically different words: ambastha primarily a- place-name, ambastha ‘an 
elephant-driver, a Ksatiiya, a mixed caste ’. 

The Ambastha janapada is located in the north-west by: 

(а) Barhaspatya ArthaSastra (III. 103) : 

kaSmlrahunambasthasindhavab iatamatraS caturaiiraS oa || 

(б) Visnupurana (II, Ch. Ill, 14-17): 

asam nadyupanadyaS ca santy anyas ca sahasra^ab I 
tasv i me kurupancala madhyade^adayo janab || 
purvadeSadikaS caiva kamarupanivasinab I 
pundrab kalihga magadha daksinatyai ca sarvaSab II 

1 Kotod as a passing reference by Weber, Ind. Stud. 13. 436-37; 9. 269. 

Cp. a-g6ra: Gk. agoT& *^-goro: nagora: Karl F. Johansson, ladogenn. Fotsch. VUI. 

I74fl. 




.138 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


tathaparSntaiji saurastrab 6ura viraa tatharbuf^^j | 
karusa malavaa caiva paripatranivasina^j || 

SauviraJj Saindhava bunafe fialvafe fiakalavasinalj } 
madrdrarms tatlidmba^ia^ paraslkddayas lathd |) ' 

(c) Mahabbarata^ II. 62. 13-16; 

kairata darada darvai} 4ura vai yamakas tatha | 
andumbara durvibhaga|j parada bablikailj. saba || 
ka4mira4 oa kumara4 ca gboraka bamsakayanab 1 
fiibitrigartayaudbeyaj^ xajanya bbadrakokayalj || 
ambasfhali kaulcuras tarkaya vastrapali^ pablavaib saba | 
va^atala^ ca mauleyal). saba ksudrakamalavai^ I) 
paupdrika^ kukkuraS caiva ^aka^ oaiva vi^am pate | 
abga yahgSA ca pupdraS ca i^apavatya gayas tatba || 

(d) Usinara was a nortbwestemer: liis posterity is given by: 

(1) Brabman^apurana (74. 18-21): 

Usinarasya patnyas tu panoa rajarsivamfiajab ) 

Nrga Krmi Nava Darva paficami ca Brsadvati ) 
Ui^arasya pntras tu panca tasu kulodvaba]|^ || 
tapasyatab sumabato jata vrddbasya dhamiDcab f 
Nrgayas tu Nrgab putro Navaya Nava ova tu || 

iSiveb tSivapuram kliyatam Yaudhoyam tu Nrgasya ca | 
Navasya Navarastram tu Krmos tu Krmiia puri t| 
Suvratasya tathdmba^pid .... 

(2) Matsyapurana (48. 16-21) : 

Usinarasya patnyas tu panca rajarsisambhovab | ' 
Bhr^a Kr^a Nava Dar^a ya ca devi Drsadvati || 

l§ives tu ^ibayalj putra^ catvaro ]okavi;§nitah I 
Prtbudarbhab SuviraiS ca Kelcayo. Madrakas tatha || 
tesam jauapadab sphitab Kekaya Madrakas tatba 1 
Sauvira4 caiva Paura^ ca Nrgasya Kekayas tathS. ]) 
Suvratasya tathdmbastha _ . I 


i Ed. Damodara Satvalokar, Vol. n, p. 242. Compare with tliis the Southern recenaon 
ed, by P. P. S. Shaetri, Vol. DI, p, 426 s 

kalavya daradS dSrvyaS 6ura haimakayos tatha I 

audumbara durvibhagai) paurava]} eaha bahlikail) J| (11. 62. 128.) 

kS&niraJ} kundamSnad ca gauraka hainsakSs tatha | 

Sail^Ss trigarta yaudheya rajanya madrakait saba || 120 
vasatayaji samauleyab saha k^dralaunalavai)] | 

^aundikaS codara4 caiva BalvoS caiva viSain pate || 130 
A compaiisozx of the two recensions shows that the real origin of these races was forgotten 
in early times, so much so that the very names greatly differed; no wonder then if ^ 6"^ 
amhaafhay in place of the correct atnbaifhsy in Northern recension. 


AMBASTHA, AMBA^THS AlilD aDWBASTHA 


139 


(3) Vayupurana (11. 37. 19-22): 

U§inarasya putras tu pafica tasu kulodvaha)^ 1 


Mrgayas (Nr-) tu Mrga^ (Nr-) putro Navaya Nava eva tu | 
Krmyalj Krmis tu Darvaya^j 6uvrato nama dharmikaj), || 
Drsadvatisuta^ capi 6ibir Ausmaro dvija^j I 
6ibcl). 6ivapuram Idiyatam Yaudheyam tu Mrgasya (Nr-) ca 1 
Navasya Navaraatram tu Krmes tu Krmila ptuci || 

Suvratasya iaihd vrsia (tathambastba?) I1 

(e) Brhatsambita: Kurmavibbaga: 

nairrtyam dlSi deSab paUavakambhojaeiudhusau'mab I 
Vadavamukhamt;awi6oa//iakapila narimukliavartab li 

lu all these passages ambastba is preceded by a vroid endiug in -E aud 
the analysis of Samdbi should bo -a-j-a- and not -a-j-a- as has till now 
been proposed. Amba§tha is the name of a janapada; its inhabitants wiU, 
of course, bo Ambasthas (and not Ambasthas like Pancalah from Pancala), 
and the epithet will apply to all the varnas alilce, while the term Ambastha 
has already been shown to mean the people of military class, i.o, the K§a- 
triyas. Tliis basic distinction was aptly typified by Panini by including 
both amba and amba in 8. 3. 97 ; it was observed, in the main, by Pali 
works, which use Ambattha alilco for Bralimins,! Kgatriyas and Vaiiyas, with 
only this difference that while Sanslmt preserves both Ambastha and Ambastha 
as two basically distinct words, Pali phonetically reduces both to Amba^ha ; 
and it may bo mentioned here that it was chiefly from Pali that the Greeks * 
borrowed the Indian names. The contamination of Ambastha with Ambastha 
lias led scholars, both European and Indian, to a luiiformly persistent confusion 
and they have, accordingly, read Ambastha in all those passages, where gram- 
mar and history explicitly demand Ambastha. 

With this definition of the distinction between the tw'o words I would 
commend to scholars the material indexed by Eaichaudhuri s and others* 
under Ambastha. 

One word more : the equation of Ptolemy’s Ambastai with Arrian’s Abas- 
tanoi is tollmg. The latter stands for ambasthana, which, in turn, equates 
with Ambastha and not Ambastha. This settles that by Ambastai the Greeks 
meant Ambasthas and not Ambasthas. 

1 Ambattha — a Bralimin.: cp. Ambattbnsutta (in Diglianikaya) running down the tradi- 
tional casto system. According to Jutaka IV. 303 there were also Ambo^has (not am-) who 
were not Brahmins by birth, but fanners, cp. BoSabrahmana Jataka (Fausboll IV. 363, 366): 
sama ombattbavessolii topi vuccanti brabmana | 
ahkhatu to maharaja tadise nipatumase n 
kosiip vupijjam koronti posayanti aje]aUe | 
kumoriyo pavochonti vivahont fivahanti co || ’ ' 

“ Details: 0. Franko, Beziohungon der Ihder zvun Westen, ZDMG. 47. 696S. 

3 Political EQst. of Anc. India, p. 107. 

* Surendranath Majiundar, Notes on Anc. Googr. by Cunningham, p. 609; McCrindle: 
Invasion of India, 156, N. 2, corrected hy R. G. Bhondarkar: Ind. Antiquary, I, p. 23; Wilson 
on Vijiju Furupa, n, Ch. HI, note on 14-17. 




140 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


There is a hitch in the. location of the Ambasthas; Sanskrit texts, in no 
way infallible in such matters, locate them in the north-west. By the Greeks, 
7 \)oTn.TiHftr is said to have come in contact with Abastanoi at the confluence 
of the Punjab rivers ; according to some they were settled on the lower Akesineh, 
But no trace of the name Amba§tha has, as yet, been detected by any in any . 
part of these regions. 

I would hazard a suggestion. There is an .ancient town, named AmbaTiata 
iii the Nakur tahasil of Saharanpur district. It is not touched by any .railway 
line and has been fast deteriorating like many other ancient towns round 
about. It presents an exceptionaUy old look and can stiU boast of several 
ancient Brahmin families, families which have sent out worthy representa- 
tives to such far off places as Lahore and Kashmir. I incline to identify this 
Ambahata with the Ambastha and would fix it to have once been the seat of 
the Ambastha power. Centralized in Ambahata, the Ambastha power could 
have very well operated up to the middle of the Punjab and even beyond that. 
It may be added that Ambaha^ is about 40 miles east of Kuruk^tra, the seat 
of so many kingdoms one after another. 


ELEMENTS OP HINDU ICONOGRAPHY AND ITS SOURCES 

By 

G. H. Rhabe, Curator, B.I.S. Mandala, Poona 

Since the time that the late Mr. T. A. Gopinathrao published the two 
volumes of his voluminous and monumental work 'Elements of Hindu Icono- 
graphy’ (EHI) in 1914 and 1916 respectively, it is ever being held and praised a& 
a standard work on that subject and the same will continue to be supposed and 
praised that way so long as no rival work is brought out by somebody else. 
The extracts from many an old Sanskrit work on sculpture, arcliitecture, etc., 
which describe the several icons from the Hindu pantheon and which are given 
by him at the end of each volume of his work (Appendices C and B respectively), 
are especially valuable to researchers in the field of iconography as they are 
quoted in extenso and as they' supply practically a bibliography of Sanskrit 
works on the subject. 

He has given about 700 extracts from about 150 different works describing 
about 326 icons, which numbers inspire an awe about the gigantic work done 
by the late Mr. T. A. Gopinathrao and one becomes rather disappointed when' 
he comes to believe that a majority of those works are in MSSl form and' 
consequently cannot get the chance of having an access to many of them. 

But when a .student goes a step ftirther and tries to verify some of the 
extracts given in the work, a doubt at once rise's in his mind as to whether the 
late Sir. T. A. Gopinatluao actually ever went through all those works from 
wluch he has quoted. Some of the works he must have indeed gone through. 



BIjBMENTS of HINDU ICONOGRAPHY AND ITS SOURCES 


141 


For instance, tlie Agama works such as Uttarakamikagama, Piiryfl.k aT fl.na. g ftTna-, 
Vaikhanasagama, Suprabhedagama and others, he must have read in the 
original as the extracts from those were never culled together according to 
the subject'matter before his time so far as I know. But many others, I 
k assure, he did not have a look at even. He might not have even known 
whether they were available in either MSS. or printed form. For those he 
solely depended on Caturvargacintamani i (CC) and iSritatvanidhi * (STN) 
from which he extracted profusely; but instead of mentioning the debt to 
these two works, he has tried to give the references of original works which 
they have cited and consequently an impression is created that he had gone 
through all' those works. But somehow or other he committed errors while 
doing this and this defect of his is at once exposed. 

• In Appendix C to the first volume of his work he gives a variety of 
monographic descriptions of Gape^a among which there is one which he has 
taken from CO and not from Visnudliarmottara * (VD), the original source of 
CO. Accordingly he has noted that way at the end of the extract 

). With respect to a description each of Sarasvati and Laksmi 
which he has extracted from CC and which originally belonged to VD, he has 
followed the same method, viz. he has cited his source as 

). But after these three descriptions, for reasons unknown to me, 
he left this rather laborious but praiseworthy method and began to cite the 
original work of reference without mentioning CC or STN. 

In the case of STN the descriptions with their references to the original 
sources are printed in such a way that there is very little possibility of mistaking 
the source of one description for that of another. The late Mr. T. A. 
Gopinathrao could not, therefore, commit any error when he extracted from 
STN in reality but cited the original source referred to by STN at the end of 
each such extract as his own source. 

But the case is quite a different one with regard to the extracts from CC. 
In it the source from which an extract is taken is generally noted at the 
beginning, then comes the extract proper and it is followed by the name of 
the deity which it describes. If this method is borne in mind there is no 
chance of committmg an error. Unfortunately this was not weU heeded to 
by the late Mr. T. A. Gk>pinathrao and his defect was easily detected. For 
instance, the quotation describmg Brahmi and other mothers that occurs in CO 
is evidently taken from ViSvakarma^astra (VKB) as the name precedes the 
extract. The late Mr. ' T. A. Gropinathrao, however, overlooldng the 
above, method, thought from the reference to VD following the description 
that it was taken from VD instead of VKS. He, therefore, cited the 
reference that way. But we have got VD in a printed form in which 
the description is not to be traced. On the contrary VD only teUs us in 

1 By Semadriy Bibliotheca Indica Series, Vol. H, Part 1, 1878. 

2 VenkateSvora Press, Bombay, Saka 1823. 

3 VenkateSvara Press, Bombay, and an English translation of a part of it by Stella 
Eramrisch, Calcutta University Press, 1928. 


142 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


' general terms that the iconography of the mothers should very closely follow 
their male coimterparts. The quotation, therefore, cannot be from VD. 
Thus he has overlooked the real sources with respect to the descriptions 
Nos, 4, 7-21, 31, 32, 34-36, 38, 66, 109, 117, 120-122, 128 also from the following 
table. Similarly in the case of the descriptions of Nos. 4, 7—20, 32, 34, 69, 60, 
109, 117, 118, 120-122 and 128 from the following table the sources shown 
by him are evidently wrong and the extracts are borrowed fium CO as the 
an.TnPi are not to be traced in the sources indicated by him and are to be found 
in CO. With regard to the descriptions of Nos. 6, 30, 36-38, 66, 66, 94r-104 
and 108, he niust have borrowed from CO as the sources shown by him are 
not available in either MSS. or printed form, as far as I linow, and the extracts 
are to be fotmd in CC with the indication of sources as shown by me in the 
table. With respect to the descriptions of Nos. 21-29, 31, 39-66 and 68, the 
sources are available; but as the references given to the sources by the late 
Mr. T. A. Gopinathrao are defective ones, it is not possible to verify them. 
But I very much doubt whether he has actually gone through those sources. 
He must have borrowed from CC though his sources in a place or two seem 
to be different ones apparently. But the simple fact that the sources of the 
descriptions of Nos. 1-3, 5, 6, 21-29, 33, 39-65, 67, 61-66, 67-108, 110-116, 
119, 123-127, 129-143 and 146-147 indicated in EHI are identical with those 
in CC and STN is alone sufficient to prove that the late Mr. T. A. Gopinabh- 
rao must have borrowed from the two works on a very large scale. 

I now tabulate below all the descriptions which the late Mr. T. A. 
Gopinathrao has really borrowed from CC and STN but to which he has tried 
to give references of the original sources cited in the two works. 


No. 


Nome of the deity 


Be- 
ferenoe 
inBHI, 
vol. and 
page 


Source cited 
in EHI 


Re- 
ference 
inCC or 
STN, 
vol. and 
page 


Source given in 
CO or STN 


(M = Matsya ; MK = M&rka^^eya ; P == Purana). 


1 

Gane§a 

2 

Sarasvatl 

3 

Laksmi 

4 

6rl 

5 

Mahalaksm! 

6 

Bhadrak&ll 

7 

Can^ika 

8 

DurgSi 

P 

Nanda , . 

10 

Amba 

11 

Sarvamangala 

12 

Halaratri 

13 

Lolita 

14 

Jyes^ha . . 


1/5 

VD 

n/76 

VD . 

1/37 

ff 

n/77 

99 

1/134 

ff 


99 

I/m 

9> 

n/78 

Pa(Ma)ya8angraha 

i(VKS}. 

if 

VKS 


(VD) 

1/116 

VD 

n/79 

VD (VKS) 

1/112 

9f 


VKS 

1/106 

«f 

n/80 

99 

1/116 

99 


99 

1/117 

99 

n/81 

99 

1/118 

99 



1/119 


99 

99 

9f 

1/169 

99 

99 

99 

99 

99 


1 The name of a work in the parenthe&es in the last column denotes the source mentioned 
^ e ow the particular extract. It has, however, no connection wliatsoever with the extract. It 
18 generally connected with the extract that follows it. 







BIjEMBNTS or hindu iconography and its sodbcbs 


143 


Nnmo of tho doity 


Ko- 
foronoo 
in EHl, 
vol. and 
pogo 


Source citod 
in BHI 


Ho- 
foronoo 
in CC or 
STN, 
vol. and 
pogo 


Source given in 
CO or STN 


Nllojyogt'ho 

Gauri 
Bhutainuta 
Surablii . . 
Yoganidru 
Brulunl and otl 
motliors 
Nino'Durgos 
Viimo 
Jyc^tliu. . . 

BnudrI . . 

KaU 

Kalavikarni 

Balavikof^ku 

Balapramathani 

Sarvablmtadomonl 

Manonmanl 

K]^na 

Maliukttll 

yrirunl CtUnun^a 

Sivaduil 

Kutynyani 

Ambiktv . . 

YogeSvnrl 
Bliniravl 
Sivfi 
Siddhi 
Bddhi . . 

. . 

Dipt! 

Bati . . 

Sveta . . 

Bhadra . . 

MoAgala . . 
JoyovijoyB 
Kali 

Gbontakarol 
Jayimt! .. 

Diti 

Arundliatl 
Aparajitfi 
Kaumfirl. . 

Brahmti . . 
Prajupati 
Dbnrmn . . 

Vi§iiu 

„ (Lokapala) 
Vfisudovn 
Sobkai^onn 
Pradyumna 
Aniruddlia 
Lak^tnuriiyapn 
YogoSvaro 

Varriha . . 
Narasidiha 
Vamana . . 
Triviltromn 
Parafiurnmo 
Bomo, etc. 


n/240 


Bhavijyo Parana 


VKS 

Murkon^oya P. 
VD 

t» 

Matsya P. 
Moj’adlpika 

Lnk^nnsamuccaya 


VKS 

Devi PurSiio 


Vi^pu Purapn 
Aditya Purupa 

ff 

Bupamantjlana 


VKS 

Siddharthasoinluta 


Sonio as in EUI 


.. (VKS) 
VKS (MKP) 
MKP (VD) 

VD 

VD (Motsyft P.) 
Matsya P. 
(Maya^pika). 
MayadipikS. 
(Lak^anasamuccaya). 
Lak^nasnmuccaya 
„ (VKS) 
Dovi Purono 


n/103 

11/104 

n/110 

n/111 

n/112 

n/ii3 


n/116 

n/iio 

n/117 


n/118 


„ (Mayo. 
dIpika). 

VD (Adityo P.) 
Aditya Purano 

„ (VKS) 
VD 


„ (VKS) 
VKS 

VKS (Siddliartha- 
soihbita). 

VD 











144 


B. 0. LAW VOLTJME 




Re- 


Re- 

ference 



. 

Name of the deity 

ference 

Source cited 

in CC or 

Source given in 

No. 

in EHl, 

inEHI 

STN, 

CC or STN. 



.voL and 

vol. and 



page 


pago 


73 


me 

VD 

11/118 

VD 

74 

B^obhadra 

1/46 

ft 

ft 

ff 

76 

Fradyunma 

1/68 

ft 

ft 

ft 

76 

Aiuruddba and iSamba 

1/69 

ff 

n/119 

ff 

77 

Gopala . . 

1/47 

ft 

If 

ff 

78 

Buddha . . 

l/49 

tt 

tf 

ft 

79 

Ealki . . 


ff 

tf 

ft 

80 

Naranar&yapa Hari> 

1/68 





Er§na 

tt 

ft 

ff 

80a 

"Haya^Iva 

*1 

ft 

n/i2o 

ft 

81 

Eapila . . 

1/64 

If 

11/121 

ft 

82 

Vyasa 

1/65 

tf 

tf 

ff 

83 

Dattatieya 

l/63 

tt 

ft 

ft 

.84 

Dhanvantari 

1/66 

ft 

ft 

ft 

85 

JalaSayin 

.1/56 

ft 

11/122 

ff 

86 

Garuda . . 

1/73 

ft 

ft 

tf 

87 

Fantabrahma 

n/188 

ft 

n/124 

ft 

88 

Murtiyastakam 

n/200 

ft 

tf 

tt 

89 

Ardhanai^vaTa 

n/168 

ft 

11/126 

ff 

90 

Dak^inamurti 

n/140 

tt 

ft 

ff 

91 

Umamabefivara 

n/71 

ft 

II/I20 

tf 

92 

Haribara 

11/171 

ft 


ff 

93 

Vidyefivara 

n/197 

ft 

tf 

„ (VKS) 

94 

Ajaikapada 

11/192 

VKS 

ft 

VKS 

95 

Ekapada. . 

n/193 

tf 

11/127 

ff 

96 

Ahirbudlma 

n/194 

ft 

f> 

tf 

97 

Virupak§a 


ft 

ft 

ff 

98 

Bevata . . . . 

» 

.» 

11/128 

If 

99 

Kara 


ft 


ft 

100 

Babmupa 

11/195 

ft 

ft 

ff 

101 

A(Trya)mbaka 

It 

ft 

t> 

ft 

102 

SureSvara 

It 

tt 

11/129 

ff 

103 

Jayonta . . 

t> 

ft 

ft 

tt 

104 

Aparajita 

tt 


.. 

„{VD) 

106 

Sranda . . 

U/216 

VD 


• VD 

106 

Bhairava 

n/92 

tt 

11/130 


107 

Nand[ 

11/231 



.. 

107o 

8 Vasfis . . 

n/27i 

VKS 

n/131 

VKS 

108 

12 Adityas 

1/86 

ft 

n/132 


109 

Frthvi . , 

1/139 

YD 

n/141 

ViSvakarmon (VD) 

110 

Indra 

n/262 

tt 

n/144 

VD 

111 

Agni 

n/254 

ft 



112 

Yama 

n/257 


11/145 


113 

Nirp ti . , 

n/259 




114 

Vormia . . 

n/280 

tt 

11/146 


116 

Vayu 

n/262 




116 

Dhanada 

n/264 


11/147 

VD {Matsya F.) 

in 

Surya (1) 


Matsya F. 

n/148 

118 

» (2) 

1/89 

VD 

n/149 

. Matsya F. (MF) 

119 

Candra (1) 

1/93 

Matsya F. 



120 

121 

» (2) 

Bhaiima (1) 

1/94 

VD 

Matsya F. 

n/ieo 

(VD) 

VD (Matsya F.) 

122 

123 

>1 (2) 

Budba . . 

1/96 

VD 

ft 

Matsya P. (VD) 

VD 

124 , 

Guru 

** 


125 

Sukra 


tt 

ft 


126 

127 

Sam 

Kahu 

1/96 

1/97 

If 

It 

ufisi 

ft 

128 

129 

Ketu 

Tulasi 

i/i’ai 

VKS 

Tulasimabatmya 

tt 

p. 22 

", (VKS) 

In EHl the same as 

130 

ASvarudba 

1/132 

Mahalaksml- 

p. 21 

in STN 




ratnakara. 








SOME tnffKNOvrar ob less know sanskbet poets 


145 


No. 

Name of the deity 

Re- 
ference 
inBHI, 
vol. and 
page 

Source cited 
in EHI 

Re- 
ference 
inCC or 
STN, 
vol. and 
page 

Source given in 

CO or STN 

131 

BhuvanoSvat'I 

1/132 

Malialak^l- 

ratnakara. 

*p. 19 

In EHI the same as 
in STN 

132 

Bulu 

• * 

TripuraBundarl 

Ealpa. 

99 

99 

133 

Bajamatang! 

9f 

B&iamat^gtkalpa 

99 

» 

134 

Mahtvlaksmi (1) 

I/13G 

VKS 

p. 25 

99 

135 

» (2) ■ .. 


Candikalpa 

P- 3 

>9 

130 

BudradiSadurga 

• 1/107 

E&raTiagnmn 

p. 10 

99 

137 

Vanodurgu. 

1/108 

, Axnnaya 

>9 

99 

133 

Agnidurga 

»» 

Saradatilaka 

p, 24 

99 

139 

Jayadurgri, 



p. 20 

99 

140 

Vindliyavttsini 


»* 

p. 27 

99 

141 

Bipumorini 

1/109 

tt 

»9 

99 

142 

Maliok&ll 

1/117 

.Candikalpa 

p.3 

99 

143 

Tripiirabliairavl 

Sarvamaugain. 

1/126 

Saradatilaka 

p. 27 

99 

144 

1/118 

02 

p. 10 


145 

AparSjitn. 

1/129 

Naradasariihita 

P- 

As in No. 143. 

140 

Indrutet 

1/130 

- Indraksiktdpa 

p. 22 

99 

147 

Annapurna 

1/131 

Karapagama 

p. 23 

99 


f SOME UNKNOWN OB LESS KNOWN SANSKBIT POETS DISCOVEBEB 
FROM THE SUBHA§ITA-SARA-SAMUC0AYA 

By 

* Db. Jatindba Bimal Chatjdhubi 

Tho MS. of tlie Subhasita-sara-somuccaya belonging to the Royal Asiatic 
Society of Bengal, No, 105G6, is unique as no other MS. of this work is knoTm 
to exist anywhere in India or outside and as it contains the verses of 151 
poets Of which even the names of 34 are not known from the anthologies 
hitherto published. These poets are: (1) Anantabliratr; (2) Balaji Bhatta; 
(3) Balamukunda; (4) Bhudadara (?); (5) Bindu Kavi; (6) Brahmendra 
Svilmin; (7) Cintamani; (8) Gauri; (9) GhanaSyama; (10) Gurjara Kavi; 
(11) Ka^ipati; (12) Kulapaptoa; (13) Kurmacala; (14) Madhusiidana 
Svamin; (16) Madireksana; (16) Maithila; (17) Mohana, probably same as 
Moliana Oihaka, quoted in tho same work; (18) Nage4a Gastrin; (19) Natha- 
knmara; (20) Bamacandra Agamin; (21) Ramajit; (22) Author of the 
Sahitya-sudhasindlm; (23) givabhakta; (24) Siipati Bhatta; (25) Author of 
the SubhSsita-sara-samuccaya; (26) Trilocana TribaiBka; (27) Uddamabhanu; 
(28) Vajratafika Gastrin; (29) Vanmi&a; (30) Varadacarya; (31) Venidatta ; 
(32) Veni Paiideya; (33) VidhMaya; (34) Vijankura. Again, many verses 
by tho remaining poets are not found in the printed anthologies. Therefore, 
the importance of the Subhasita-sara-samuccaya cannot be overrated. 

Most of the poets quoted in the Subha§ita-sara-samuccaya flo'urished in 
Mediaeval India. The anthologies compiled between 1400-1700 A.D. contain 

lo ' - 



146 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


naturally quite a large number of these verses. But as very few of these 
anthologies have as yet been published, many Sanskrit poets still are unknown 
to us. We notice here the lives and literary activities of the above-mentioned 
34 poets only. 

(1) Amntahliratr 

The Subhasita-sarfii-samuccaya (henceforth abbreviated as SSS.) records 
only one verse of this poet in which Viparita-surata is described.^ The same 
verse is also preserved in the ’Padyaveni* (henceforth abbreviated as PV.). 

(2) BaldjiBhatfa 

Only three verses of this poet are known to exist. The PV. records all 
of them, whereas the Sukti-sundara, henceforth abbreviated as SS., preserves 
one and the SSS. another.* PV. 60 eulogizes a king who is similar to Kamadeva 
in physical charm but differs from him in the art of archery. In PV. 81, the 
poet describes the fame of the king which is so white that Satyabhama 
mistakes Krsna for Balarama and poor women mistake the Guhja for pearls. 
The third verse is devoted to the description of the Sun. Balaji Bhatta’s 
style is quite fascinating; his power of imagination distinctly exceeds the 
average. 

(3) Balamukunda 

The SSS. is the only anthological work that records the name of 
Balamukunda. Unfortunately, only one verse of this poet is preserved in it, 
viz. No. 269. It describes the Moon : 

(4) Bhvdadara 

Only one verse of this poet of this peculiar name is preserved in SSS. 
(No. 432). The Sabhyalamkararia, henceforth abbreviated as SA., quotes 
this verse but gives the name of the poet as Bhohara (V. 604). The verse is also 
quoted in the Sarhgadhara-paddhati (V. 3926) under the same name. Both 
the names of the poet are equally unintelligible and we are left to mere 
guess-work, in the present stage of our knowledge, for the real name. The 
verse describes the Indian season Hemanta: 

(5) Bindu Kavi 

The PV . preserves eight verses of this poet, viz. verses 231, 248, 266, 263, 
281, 689, 626 and '669 of which the SSS. quotes only two, viz. SSS. 260 = 689 
and SSS. 361 = PV. 626. Bindu Kavi in his verse on the forehead, PV.' 
255, fancies that at the beginning of creation, there arose two nnnr>T»H from the 
sea , one was dmded into two of which one-half found its place on the forehead 

* Verse No. 734. 

» PV. 60; BV. 616 = SSS. 68 and PV. 81 = SS. 62. 

lOB 


® PV. 473. 



SOME UNKNOWN OK LESS KNOWN SANSKBIT POETS 


147 


of ^amkara and the other-lialf formed the forehead of a beautiful damsel. 
The other was donated to Heaven. In his verse PV. 263 on the vermilion- 
mark on the parting line of the hair, the poet opines that the red line betrays 
the loving heart of the girl and the parting line of the hair is nothing but a 
^ path designed for the free coming and going of the god of love. The black 
mark on the moon is, according to our poet, neither a black antelope nor a 
jjiasa (large fish), but the burnt Cupid placed as such by clever Rati on the 
body of the repository of ambrosia for rejuvenation and revival to life (PV. 
589 = SSS. 250). In PV. 626 = SSS. 351, the poet demonstrates that the 
rainy season is as pleasing as a woman. In his anyokti on the flower Gam^aka, 
he blames this flower, charming and fragrant as it is, for not being able to 
attract the bees, coimoisseurs of the art of selecting flowers (PV. 669). 


(6) Brahmendra Svamin 


Only one verse of this poet is preserved for us today, viz. : 



n PV. 567 = SSS. 131. 


One Brahmendra Svamin was a contemporary of Emperor Shah Jehan (1628- 
1658 A.D.). He honoured Kavindracarya Sarasvati -^rith an address on the 
happy occasion of the abolition of the piigrim-tax by the Emperor through 
liis mediation and persuasion.^ This Brahmendra Svamin is probably identical 
with our poet. It is curious that the addresses of Brahmendra Svamin and 
Brahmendra Sarasvati * in honour of Kavindracarya partly agree word by word 
though it is not likely that the two persons would bo the same. 


(7) Gintanmni 

The PV. quotes verses of Cintamani, viz. 163, 169, 237, 662, 578, 880 
and three verses of Cintamani Dik^ita who is probably the same as our poet, 
viz. 279, 609 and 643. The SSS. quotes only one of them, viz. 678, devoted 
to the description of moon-rise: — 


In PV. 163, Cintamani praises Jehangir (1605-1627 A.D.) and in PV. 169, 
his son Parvez. There is no doubt that our poet was a contemporary of 
Jehangir. Therefore, Cintamapi must have flourished in the beginning of the 
seventeenth century A.H. 


(8) Oaurl 

The oixly source of our knowledge about this woman poet is the Padyavepi. 
The SS. is indebted to this work for the verses of Gauri. A detailed account 


^ .See Kavlndra.ctvndrodtvya, p. 20. 


* Op, eit. 



148 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


of this poetess has been given in the Introduction to Sanskrit Poetesses, Part A 
and therefore, the same is not repeated here. 

( 9 ) Qlicmdymw 

Ghana^ySma was the Minister and Court-poet of King Tulckoji of Tanjore 
(1729-1735 A.D.). So there is no doubt that this poet flourished in the 
beginning of the eighteenth century A.D. He was a very voluminous -writer 
and was fortunate in having two learned vives, Sundari and Kamala, who 
wrote a commentary on the Viddha-lalabhanjika of BajaSekhara. For a 
detailed account of this poet, reference may be made to my article on Ghana- 
dyama published in the September issue of the Indian Historical Qmrterly, 
1943.1 

(10) GnrjaraKavi 

One Gurjara Kavi praises Kavindra on having the pilgrim-tax abolished 
by Shah Jehan 2 and it is quite likely that our Gurjara Kavi %vil] be identical 
with this poet. The Subhasita-sara-samuccaya, quoting the verses of 
Venidatta, must have been composed after the middle of the seventeenth 
century A.D. — ^by 1676 A.D. Shah tTehan ruled from 1628—1658 A.I). and 
Gurjara’s address to Kavindra was composed witlrin this period. This poet is 
only likely to be quoted by the author of the SSS., who was compiling his work 
soon after this period. 

The SSS. quotes only one of his verses. It is on the Evening : 



II \80 =PV. 669. 

(11) Kaiipati 

Out of 11 verses quoted in the SSS., three are traced in the Mukundananda- 
bhapa of KS^pati.s viz. and being 

versps 72, 91 and 158 of the work. This Kaiipati was also the author of 
the Sahgita-Gangadhara--V 7 akhya called ^ravananandini.^ In the Prasta- 
vana of the Mukundananda-bhapa, Kaiipati says that he belonged to the 
Kaupdinya Gotra: — 

(12) Kulc^andita 

Nothing about this poet is at present known. Only one verse by him is 
quoted in the SSS. ; it is on Sunrise : 

1 See also Modem Beview, October, 1943, pp. 299-300, for an abridged account. 

- KaVEndra-candrodaya, pp. 32-33, V. 211. 

s Ninnaya-sagara Prpss ed., 3rd revised edition, Bombay, 1926. 

* Cat. Cat., I, 105 and Trinnical Catalogue, IV. 7696. MSS. in Mithila by Jayaswal, H. 8 
and Taylor’s Catalogue of Oriental MSS. in the Library of the CoUege, Fort St. George, I. 80. - 


SOME inrKNOWK OE LESS KNOWN SANSKEIT POETS 


149 





'*1’^ II 8«i^ =PV. 6io. 

The Padyavem attributes the verse to Krsna Pa^^ita; so EHulapan^ta 
was probably a designation of our poet. 


(13) Kurmacala 

Only one verse of Kurmacala describing the rainy season has been 
quoted in the SSS. : 




II I) 


The above is attributed to Rudrachaudra in the Rasika-jivana (Vol. II 
of Pracyava^ Mandira Sanskrit Text Series, p. 63), V. 1261 and the PV. 629 
attributes the same to Kurmacala-nrpati. Rudraoandra was probably the 
name of the King of Kumaun, author of this verse. Kurmacala’s name is 
hot found in any anthologj’’ compiled before 1600 A.D. 


(14) Madlmsfidanu, Svdmin 

The SSV. quotes two versos from Madlmsudana, viz. Nos. 3481-3482, 
Tho PV. quotes verses of Madhusudana Svamin as well as Sarasvati, and it 
does not seem likely that they' would be identical. Madhusudana Sarasvati’s 
only poetical work hitherto Itnomi is the Ananda-mandakini but none of the 
three verses quoted in tho SSS., Nos. Ill (= PV. 637), 671 (= PV. 486) and 
732 ( = PV. 471 and RJ. 1137) beginning as '?C*n etc., 

otc. and etc. respectively, are traced there. Madhu- 

sudana Sarasvati also led the life of an ascetic and it is not Imown whether in 
some part of his life he used the designation Svamin. In the present stage of 
our Imowledgo, wc cannot, however, identify them. 

(15) Madirek§ana 

Tho SSS. quotes the verses of a few poeiesses, viz. Gauri, Madireksapa, 
Morika, Padmavati, Phalguhastini and Sila Bhattarilca. The name of 
Madireksapa is not found in any other anthology 

(16) Maithila 

Only two verses are attributed to this poet of Mithila in the SSS., viz. 
No. 572 cPgrr, etc. and No. 746, siT^Tf^ftreiT, etc. The former is 

on the lamentations of a separated lover and the latter on Ratavasana. 
It is the same as V. 547 of Subhasita-padya-samgraha, a MS. of which has 


1 Kor ter vorso, date, 6tc., soo Sanskrit Pootessss, Part A, 2nd edition, pp. xis and 18. 


160 


n. 0. I-AW VOLUJIK 


only recently been discovered and at present belongs to the Benares 
Sanskrit College MSS. Libraiy. It is also quoted in the RJ. (V. 989) and 
PR. (43.4). Four other verses are also ascribed toVthis poet in the SPS,, 
viz. No. 372, ; No. 480, 5 No. 601, 

and No. 545, etc. The antho]ogic.s preserve the names 

of such poets as Gauda, Gurjara, Maithila; but these names indicate merely 
the places where the poets flourished. The versos may really bo considered 
as more or less anonymous. 

(17) Mohana or Mohana OjMlca- 

The PV. and the SSS. preserve 24 versos of Mohana Ojha dr Ojhaka, of 
which 22 are common in both the work and only two, viz. SSS. 495, 
etc., a verse on the lamentations of a separated lady-lover and No. 698, 
etc., a verse on the Ratarambha are not found in the PV. 
One verse of Mohana, viz. etc., has been tudee quoted both in 

the SSS. and the PV. under the headings and I 

From a study of his verses, it appears that Mohana Ojhaka wrote a "work on 
the Rasa-^astra from winch the verses have been quoted. Wo may classify 
his verses thus : 

Hesoines: {a) — PV. 319; (h) ?lf5i|crr — PV. 366; (c) ^®tr 

PV. 367 ; and (d) 377. 

Heboes ; (a) — PV. 422 ; (6) TftsnFrt^— PV. 430. 

Tarunya: PV. 188; PV. 189 = SSS. 816. 

Various phases of love: Rata; Ratarambha, RatavasSna, etc. 

Romavali: PV. 202. 

Breasts: PV. 214. 

. The lamentations of a lover and lady-lover: PV. 289 == SSS. 660 and 
SSS. 495. 

Entreaties in the morning: PV. 488. 

Water-sport in PV. 648 = SSS. 81. 

One noticeable feature of Mohana’s composition is his aversion to the 
YaJirohii. His verses, verging on alliteration, are at times quite sweet: 

^rr?% II pv. 375. 

« 

(18) Nageia Sastrin 

^ A poet of this name is not found in any other anthology. It is unfortunate 

that a single verse of this poet should be preserved for us in the SSS., verse 
No. 229; . 



SOME ITinCNOWN OE LESS KNOWN SANSKEIT POETS 


151 





Four verses of one Nagesa Pa^^ta, son of Somaraja Pari^ita, are found 
^ in the Kavlndra-candrodaya, p. 10. 


(19) Nathahumara 

The SA. (V. 580) and the SSS. (V. 107) quote the same verse of Natha> 
kumara onDola; 

I* 

It is also quoted in the BJ. (V. 1269)’ and attributed to Kumaranayaka 
there. The name Nathakumaxa is also preserved in the SP. and the SMV. 
So Nathakumara and Kumaranayaka must be identical. 


(20) Edmacandra Agamin ^ 

Ramacandra Agamin, nine of whose verses have been quoted in the PV., 
is to be distinguished from Ramacandra Bhatta. The former was the son of 
Janardana Bhatta and grandson of Purusottama whereas the latter was the 
son of Laksmana Bhatta and younger brother of Vallabha Scarya. Rama- 
candra Bhatto is certainly a far greater, and consequently, more popular poet 
than Ramacandra Agamin. 

Ramacandra Agamin wrote a work called Radha-vinoda-kSvya with a 
commentary on the same. In verse 19 of the Radha-vinoda, he says: 




and again, in 31-22: 

B a 


© 





I v.r. SA. I 

» v.r. SA. $fiWT I 


s v.r. SA. I 

* v.r. SA. 


162 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Raniacandra Agamin appears to Lave composed .this work at an early 
age; see V. 24, " 

Bamacandra Agamin is also to be distinguished from Eamlicandra 
Adhvarin, son of Patanjali Makliilvara, grandson of ICeiSava Adhvarin and 
great-grandson of Batnakheta Adhvatin. _ 

That the author of the Badha-vinoda-kavya was Bamacandra Agamin is 
seen from the colophon as given in MS. No. 376 of 1892-96, now belonging to 
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 

The verses of Bamacandra Agamin as quoted in the SSS. and PV, may bo 
classified as follows: — 

1. King: sreipr : PV. 113 (anonymous in O.T.). 

2. „ on : PV. 121. 

3. fsnnftWH : PV. 296. 

' 4. ^■5t<^rni«hnsT : PV. 619. 

6. (after : PV. 623 = SSS. 89. 

6. : PV. 636 = SSS. 109. 

7. : PV. 660 = SSS. 126. 

8. PV. 617«SSS. 326. 

9. PV. 646. 


(21) RamajH 

The Padyavenl quotes six verses of Ramajit, e.g.: (1) No. 327, 

etc. on ; (2) No. 531, etc. on 

; (3) No. 662, etc. on ; (4) No. 597, 

etc. on ; (6) No. 659, etc. on 

and (6) No. 800, etc. on Of these, 

the SSS. 130 is the same as PV. 552. The Cat. Cat. 1 notices one ^IRTf^Tci, 
author of the or a work on Dharma, Bhandarkar’s 

Report, 1882-83, 3. 96 (102). But there is no evidence to establish any 
identity between the two. 

In PV. 552 on the Sunset, the Sun is described as a faithless husband, who 
ignores his wife, the East, becomes degraded and consequently begins to fade 
away in life. 

The thoughts of Ramajit are sublime. In PV. 697, Kamadeva is repre- 
sented as carrying a bow without its flower-shafts as in winter flowers dropped 
off and the vernal flowers were still within the trees during the Vasanta- 
sanidhi. 

In. his verse on the Winter-breeze, PV. 658, Ramajit says the breeze is 
■^doubtedly the friend of fire as even the winter-breeze, by nature cool as it ' 
is, sets the heart to fire : 



SOME UNKNOWN OB LESS KNOWN SANSKEIT POETS 


163 


5ElRr«<^e( gig- 
srg i 

^cit«ri' ’JT^fspr-iTTCcitOT 

^ II 


(22) Sahityasudhasindhu, Author of ^ 

Tho Sahityasudhasindhii, a rhetorical work, was composed by Vi^vanatha, 
son, of Trimalla and grandson of Ananta of Dharmasnra city on the Godavari 
before 1602 A.I)., which is the date of a MS. of the work preserved at present 
in Kashmh' and noticed by Stein in liis Catalogue of MSS. in TCaRh-miv (xxix). 
This Vi^vanatha is also the author of the Mrgaxikalekha-natika, a MS. of which 
is dated Samvat 1664, i.e. 1608 A.D.^ As Vi4vanatha quotes Cap^dasa, 
author of a commentary on Mammate, he could not have flourished much 
earlier than 1600 A.D. The Sahityasudhasindhu consists of three Tarangas. 


(23) Sivabhakta 


r 


This may be tho real name or an epithet of the poet. The name of this 
poet is not unfortunately found in any other anthology. The only verse 
by him is preserved in the SSS., No. 308, etc. in its 

section on I The verse is also quoted anonymously in other 

anthologies. 

(24) Srlpaii Bhatia 

SSS. 176, etc. is the only versd of Sripati Bhatta quoted in this 

anthology. Tho same verse has been quoted by Jalhana in his Sukti-muktavali, 
p, 256, V. 12, \inder the name Srithakkura. No other anthologj'^ quotes any 
verse of ^ripati except the SUK. which quotes only one verse. This verse on 
^^ f^i l i qTcT, ^ etc. is a very good verse indeed. But 

whether this 6ripati is identical with the author of our anthology still remains 
to be ascertained. 


(26) Author of (he Subhasiia-sara-samuccaya. 

It is rather strange that lurlike all other authors of anthologies, the author 
of the SSS. should leave for us in a compilation of 844 verses onij’ 7' verses. 
The verses are on Spring-breeze (No. 301); a separated lady-love dming the 
summer (No. 339); the wife of a traveller (No. 441); two 

^ on erre?!3I (Nos. 833 and 837) and two on (Nos. 749 ^dJ750 ). Two of 

the verses claimed by him as his own, viz. the one on (No. 339) 

1 Vide printed edition, Introduction. The poet here soys of himself : 

»JJrT®t«StTfiWTsri' . \ MSdhavadevo, author of the Nyaya-sSra, also 

appears to belong to the family of "Vlivanathadevo. 



154 


B. C. IiAW VOMJlMT! 


and the other on (No. 441) are quite enjoyable and are, therefore, 

quoted here : 


No. 339. 

’srf^ ^ i 

^p:0nB3Tr ^ ^ 


No. 441 . Tpq«tK Mrra 

^tcirg^STPl^ 37«T^ %T! 

jn.qn ' '^^ nfeil^iii ^indsfi 




The compiler appears to have violated all principles of honesty as he 
claims two verses of Vc:nidatta, viz. PV. Nos. 749 and 760 as his own. Again, 
SSS. 339 is attributed to Bhanukara in the PJR. (42.17) and BJ. (942). 
V, 441 is also an imitation ; cf. SSB*B. 101.9. 

As this author quotes the Padyaveni, it must have been composed later 
than that work. Vei^datta composed the PV. in the middle of the seventeenth 
century. The SSS. was in all probability composed by the end of the 
seventeenth century. 

(26) Trilocana Trivadilca 

There are sets of verses on Moon-rise by Nagesa Gastrin, Trilocana 
Trivadika (Tewari), Venipandeya and others, which evidently show that they 
were all contemporaries and composed the verses in a competition or for some 
similar purpose. Otherwise, the fourth line of all verses, 
would not have been the same. They were all evidently contemporaries 
of the author of the SSS. and flourished in the second half of the eighteenth 
century A.D. 

(27) UdddmabKami 


The following verse is attributed to Uddamabhanu in the SSS. 155 and to 
TJddamabharati in PV. 564. The description is a grand one : — 


^ 





Only another verse of Uddamabharati or Uddamabhanu is found in the 
PV. No. 565. The name of the poet seems to have been muddled somehow or 
other. It is not likely that the poet would be called both Uddamabharati 
and Uddamabhanu. 



SOME UNKNOWN OE LESS KNOWN SANSKBIT POETS 


155 


(28) VajrataAha Sastrin 

The name Vajratahka is unlino'vsTi to anthological literature except for 
the SSS. where some of his verses arc quoted, viz. 41 on Sunrise and 218-219 
on the pangs' of women whose lovers are away from them. 

«fii<4i«rn;Tcr i 





Verses 218-219 : 

^IKmXil^IcWE^rsi^qiT n II 

505*2!™ 

vpi (?) eWS I 

f^^tjS%f%|ig^TWTCwraEi“ 

^ cjwfw cipcnj iipcracip n 

(29) Vanmisra 

The SSS. quotes the only verse of Vahmisra, the subject being 



era 

^sra^ipftf^ vNH’w. n ii 


The verse is attributed to Dehari MiSra in the Vidyakara-sahasraka, 
V. 647. The BJ. and the PB'. attribute it to Babumisra and the PV. to 
^amkara Miira. 

(30) Varada Acarya, Atithor of the Vasania-tilaka 

SSS. 16-17 and SSS. 39-40, describing the morning and the sunrise 
respectively, are traced in Vasanta-tilaka of Varada Acarya.i This Varada 
Acarya was a contemporary of Bamabhadra Dhtsita, .author of the Smgara- 
tilaka Bhana and the Patanjali-carita. He was the son of Sudar^ana Kavi of 


1 See pp. 4-6 of JivSnenda ■VMdyfisagara’s edition, Calcutta, 1872. 


166 


B. O. BA.V7 VOLXJME 


Conjeeveram, as the poet himself says in the beginning of the Vasanta-tilaka.^ 
Varadarya flourished in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In his 
drama Vedanta-vilasa or Yatiraja-vijaya, Varada Acarya describes the life of 
Ramanuja in six acts. 

(31) Venidatla 

The Sulcti-Sundara has quoted two verses’ of Venidatta and the SSS. 
28. AH these are taken from the P'V. which contains 231 of his verses. The 
SS. and SSS. were both greatly influenced by the Padyaveni as is evident 
from the structure as well as the series of parallel quotations in them. 

Venidatta composed his work Panca-tattva-praka4ika 2 in 1644. As the 
Sukti-Sundara which must have been composed by the end of the seventeenth 
century quotes the verses of the PV., it must have been composed by the 
middle of the seventeenth century or slightly later. Again, Shah Jehan 
(1628-1668 A.D.) is referred to in one of the verses of Harinarayana Mifra,® 
which Axes up the upper limit of the date of the composition of the work. 

Venidatta was the son of Jagajjivana and grandson of Nilakantha. 
Ve^datta reveres Nilakantha as the ornament of the Yajnika-family. The 
PV. quotes sixteen verses of Jagajjivana and six verses from his Vrajya. This 
work also quotes one of the verses of Nilakantha and two verses of Yajnika. 
Probably, this Nilakaptha and Yajnika are the same as the grandfather and 
the ancestor of Veqidatta referred to in the colophons. So it is doubtless 
that Venidatta was bom in a very cultured family and reared up in environ- 
ments that were very congenial to the making of a poet.. In some verses 
Vemdatta praises King Nasalati; probably, ho is the same as Aliramiratmaja 
or son of Miramira referred to in some verses. In some verses, again, he praises 
Bang Rama. This Rama is, probably, the same as Virasimhasuta praised 
elsewhere by Venidatta. Besides these kings, Venidatta eulogiaes in PV. 93 
a king called Pratapa. Venidatta was certainly patronized by them. Yajnika 
praises one Bajivanetra as well who was probably his patron tool 

The compilers of anthologies usually incorporate some of their verses in 
their compilations, Venidatta too has preserved for us 231 versos in this 
anthology out of a collection of 889 verses. Almost every section of the 
work contains some of his verses. Some of these verses wiU probably be 
traceable in his Vasudeva-carita, the only MS. of which is preserved in the 
India Office Library and cannot, therefore, imder these war circumstances, be 
consulted by me. The PaSca-tattva-prakasika which has been noticed in 
Rajendralal Mitra’s Notices might also contain some of these verses or at 
least furnish some clue to the original sources of some of them; but the MSS. 
noticed by Rajendralal are mostly not procurable nowadays. It is not 
unlikely that Venidatta coipposed the major portion of these verses for the work 
Padyave^d. 


^ etc., p. 2. 

® PV. 141 = SS. 138. 


^ Bajendralal Mitra’s Notices, 1436. 


SOME UNKNOWN OE LESS KNOWN SANSKRIT POETS 


167 


Ve^datta was not a first class poet but nobody can doubt, after perusing 
the PV., that the author was a oonuoisseui’ of poetry. The weak part of the 
PV. is the composition of the author himself; but the verses culled by lum 
from other sources are simply marvellous; every one of them is a gem. No 
► other Sanskrit anthology of this age can be compared with the PV. in this 
respect. The verses ofi Veriidatta are pleasing to the ear, but present gram- 
matical inaccuracies and what is more — ^they caimot be properly interpreted. 
They also aboimd in redundant uses which should be purged out but for 
metrical reasons. Still, his verses were not altogether ignored; thus, the SS. 
quotes two of his verses and SSS. quite a good many of them. 

There are six Tara£igas in the PV. The first on the description of gods, 
viz. Siva, Vis'nu, Bhavani and Surya, consists of 52 verses. The second on 
the description of kings consists of 120 verses. Herein Akbar, Bamacandra, 
son of Virabhanu, Dalapati and Gurjarendra are eulogized by Akbariya- 
Kalidasa. Bhanukara praises Virabhanu and Nizamshah; Cintamani — 
Jehangir and his son Shah Parvez; Harinarayapa — ^Emperor Shah Jehan; 
Vanilzanthabharana — ^Dillindraoudamapi; Ganapati — ^Vasudeva; Bamacandra 
Bhatta — Virasimha; Bajasekhara — ^Virabhiipa; Samkara Bhatta — ^Darpa- 
narayana and Yajnika — ^Bajivanetra. The patrons of Venidatta have been 
mentioned before. The third Taranga consisting of 100 verses deals with 
women — ^their girlhood, advent of youth, youthful age, their limbs and various 
adornments. The fomrth is devoted to love; herein the lovers and lady-lovers 
are found in their various mood-types and other categorical divisions and the 
eight Sattvika-bhavas are also beautiftdly illustrated. The fifth in 134 verses 
deals with' various parts of the day and needless to say, caimot dispense with 
the description of love. The sixth deals with miscellaneous subject-matters; 
the first 67 verses are devoted to the description of six Indian seasons ; then 
follow the verses on the forest and hermitage ; then there are 78 anyoktis with 
reference to various animals, birds, trees, etc.; then 35 verses are foimd in 
praise or censure of the benevolent, the rogues, etc. Then 12 verses are 
devoted to the praise of the poetical works and poets; here in PV. 788 Ganapati 
praises highly Ganeivara and in PV. 799 Bhanukara eulogizes Narahari. The 
following thirty verses deal with the other sentiments than ^mgara. Puzzles 
are dealt with in the following 39 verses; the ten Incarnations in the following 
20 verses and so on. * 

Vepidatta gives us the names of 116 poets i whose verses he has quoted 
fl.Tid there are many anon 3 nnous verses. Of the poets mentioned by name, 
only 16 poets are well known to us ; the rest are more or less new discoveries 
to us. A few Bengali poets headed by Madhusudana Sarasvati are also found 
here. Of the women poets, Kerali, Gauri, Padmavati, Morika and Vikata- 
nitamba have been quoted here. Besides these, the sources of some verses have 
been mentioned by Venidatta, viz. the'Bhoja-prabandha, Jagajjivana-vrajya, 


1 An account of these poets •will be found in my forthcoming work Padyaveni of 'Venldatta, 
Publication No. 1 of the Institute of Oriental Learning (Praoyova^d Mandira) in the Text Series. 


168 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Ratnavali, Subhasita-muktavali and Va^rasala-vrajya. Thus the names of 
the authors or sources of only 108 verses quoted in PV. are not known to us. 

(32) VcnlPandeya 

As stated before under Trilocana Triva^ka, Veni Pandeya and others 
must have composed the verses with the fourth lino in all of them as the same, 
certainly because they all agreed or intended to do so. Most probably, he 
was a contemporary of the author of the SSS. The SSS. preserves seven of 
his verses — all on moon-rise, Nos. 230-236. 

(33) VidhMaya 

One poet Candrodaya’s single verso on Moon-rise has been quoted in the 
SSV. Presumably, this Candrodaya will be identical with our poet Vidhudaya, 
but until farther evidence is forthcoming, we cannot identify them. This 
Vidhhdaya is indeed a good poet as his verses show. His versos on Vayahsandhi, 
Nos. 803-804 of the SSS., are grand. 

(34) BijSAkura 

The only verse of this poet quoted in SSS. is No. 605, 
etc. This verso is attributed to Bijaka in SSV. Therefore, Bijafikura and 
Bijaka are identical. 

Abbeeviations 

PR. = Padya-racana. 

PV. = Padyaverd. 

RJ. s= Rasika-jivana. 

SS. = Sukti-sundara. 

SA. = Sabhyalamkarana. 

SSS. = Subhasita-sara-samuccaya. 


KAMMA, OR THE BUDDHIST LAW OF CAUSATION 

By 

Revd. Theba NZbada 

Ineqmlity 

What is the cause of this inequality of mankind ? How do we account 
for this totally ill-balanced world ? 

Why are some vicious persons prosperous and virtuous persons 
imfortunate ? 

Why shoidd one be brought up in the lap of luxury, endowed with 
mental, moral, and physical qualities, and another in absolute poverty, steeped 
to the lips in misery ? Why should one be bom a millionaire and anothpr a 



KAMMA, OR THE BUDDHIST LAW Oli- CAUSATrOK 


159 


pauper 1 Why should one be made a mental prodigy and another an idiot ? 
Why should one be born with saintly characteristics and another with criminal 
tendencies ? Why should some be linguists, artists, mathematicians or 
musicians from their very cradle 1 Why should some be congenitally blind, 
^ deaf, and deformed ? 

Is this inequality due to blind chance or accidents Strictly speaking, 
nothing happens to any man that he does not deserve for some reason or 
other. 

Could this be the fiat of an irresponsible God-Creator ? 

It is impossible to conceive of such a being either in or outside the universe. 

Some writers of old authoritatively declare that God created man after 
his own image. Some modem thinkers firankly state that man created God 
after his own image. The latter seems to-be more reasonable. 

‘What land of a Deity must it be who creates a baby-soul, bom of diseased 
parents, foredoomed to ill-health and a life of poverty, misery, probably crime ? 
In these days surely no one could for a moment entertain such a lame explana- 
tion or consider it in any way satisfactory.’ i 

As Charles Bradlaugh says, ‘the existence of evil is a terrible stumbling 
block to the Theist. Pain, misery, crime, poverty confront the advocate of 
eternal goodness, and challenge with unanswerable potency his declaration 
of Deity as aIl-good,‘all-wise, and all-powerful 

According to the theological principles man is created arbitrarily and 
without his desire, and at the moment of his creation is either blessed or 
damned eternally. Hence, man is either good or evil, fortunate or unfortunate, 
noble or depraved, firom the first step in the process of his physical creation to 
the moment of his last breath, regardless of Iris individual desires, hopes, 
ambitions, stmggles or devoted prayers. Such is theological fatalism. 

In the words of Schopenhauer ‘Whoever regards himself as having become 
out of nothing must also think that he will again become nothing; for that an 
eternity has passed before he was, and then a second eternity has begun, 
through which he will never cease to be, is a monstrous thought. 

‘If birth is the absolute begiiming, then death must be Iris absolute end; 
and the assumption that man is made out of nothing leads necessarily to the 
assumption that death is his absolute end.’ 

According to Einstein ‘If this being (God) is omnipotent, then every 
occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every 
human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of 
holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an Almighty 
i- Being ? 

‘In giving out punishments and rewards, He would to a certain extent 
be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the 
goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him ? ’ 


1 A. E. Powell. 

a See his essay on ‘A Plea for Atheism’ — Eumanity'a Gain from Unbelief, p. 23. 


160 


B. 0. liAW VOLUME 


Commenting on human suffering and God Prof. J. B. S. Haldane says : — 
‘Either suffering is needed to perfect human charaetor, or God is not 
Almiglvty. The former theory is disproved by the fact that some people who 
have suffered very little, but have been fortunate in their ancestry and educa- 
tion have very fine characters. The objection to the second is that it is only- 
in cofmection with the universe as a whole that there is any intellectual gap 
to be filled by the postulation of a deity. And a creator could pro.sumably 
create whatever he or it wanted.’ 

In Despair, a poem of his old age, Lord Toimyson thus boldly attacks 
God, who as recorded by Isaiah, says: ‘I make peace and create evil ’ (Isaiah 
xlv. 7). 

‘ What I I should call on that infinite love that has served us so well 1 
Infinite cruelty, rather, that made everlasting hell, 

Made us, foreloiew us, foredoom’d us, and does what he will with his omi ; 
Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan.’ 

In the Jatakas the Bodhisatta dismisses this idea of a God-Creator 
thus : — 

‘He who has eyes can see the sickening sight; 

Why does not Brahma sot his creatures right ? 

If his wide power no limits can restrain, 

Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless 1 

Why are his creatmes all condemned to pain. 

Why does he not to all give happiness ? 

Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail. 

Why triumphs falsehood, — truth and justice fail ? 

I count your Brahma one th’unjust among. 

Who made a world to shelter wrong,’ 

(Jataka Stories, Vol. VI/p. 110.) 

‘ If there exists some Lord all powerfiil to fulfil 
In every creature bliss or woe, and action good or ill. 

That Lord is stained with sin. Man does work his will.’ 

(Jataka Stories, Vol. V, p. 122.) 

Surely ‘the doctrine that all men are sinners and have the essential sin of 
Adam is a challenge to justice, mercy, love, and omnipotent fairness.’ 

Heredity 

According to some modem thinkers this variation is due to heredity and 
environment. One must admit that they are partly instrumental, but they, 
caimot be solely responsible for the subtle distinctions and vast differences 
that exist amongst individuals. Why should, for instance, twins who are 
physically alike,- enjoying the same privileges of upbringing, be very often 
temperamentally, intellectually, and morally totally, different ? 



KAMMA, 0» THE BUDDHIST LAW OF OAUSATIOK 


161 


Heredity alone cannot account for this variation. It explains only 
similarities hut not the differences. Physical germ explains only a portion of 
man. With regard to mental, intellectual, and moral differences we are left 
in the dark. The theory of heredity cannot give a satisfactory explanation 
^':for the birth of a criminal in a long line of honourable ancestors, for the birth 
of a saint or a noble man in a family rotten to the trees, for the arising of 
colossal characters like Homer and Plato, men of genius like Shakespeare, 
infant prodigies like Pascal, Mozart, Beethoven, Baphael, etc. 

According to Buddhism this variation is due not only to heredity, 
environment, ‘nature and nurture*, but also to our own Hamma or, in other 
words, to our own inherited past actions and present deeds. We 'ourselves 
are responsible for our own deeds, happiness and misery. We create our own 
heavens. We create our own hells. We are the architects of our own fate. 

‘Every living being,’ says the Buddha, ‘has Kamma as its own, its 
inheritance, its cause, its kinsman, its refuge. Kamma is that which 
differentiates all living beings into low and high states,.* 

Alluding to this variation the Atthasalini states: — 

‘Depending on this difference in Kamma appears the difference in the 
birth of beings, high and low, base and exalted, happy and miserable. 
Depending on the difference in Kamma appears the difference in the individu^ 
features of beings as beautiful and ugly, high-bom or low-bom, well-built 
or deformed. Depending on the difference in Kamma appears the difference 
in the worldly conditions of beings as gain and loss, fame and disgrace, 
blame and praise, happiness and misery. 

‘ By Kamma the world moves, 
by Kamma men live, 
and by Kamma are beings bound; 

As by its pin the ro lling chariot wheel."' 

By Kamma one attains glory and praise. 

By Kamma bondage, min and tyraimy. 

.Knowing that Kamma bears ffuit manifold. 

Why say ye, “In the world no Kamma is ? 

(Samyutta Nikaya, Vol. I, p. 227.) 

Thus, according to the Buddhist conception, our mental, intellectual, 
and moral differences are mainly due to our own actions and tendencies. 

Although Buddhism attributes this variation chiefly to Kamma, yet it 
does not assert that everything is due to Kamma. In such a case there is no 
difference between Buddhism and some theistio religions which attribute 
^ everything to a single cause. .Kamma is only one of the twenty-fomr conditions 
enumerated in the Patfhana, 

Befuting the erroneous view that ‘Whatsoever weal or woe or neutral 
feeling is experienced, all that is due to some previous action’, the Buddha 
states in the Anguttara Nikaya: — 

‘ So, then, owing to a previous action, men will become murderers, tMeves, 
unchaste, liars, slanderers, babblers, covetous, malicious, and perverse in view. 

n 



162 


B. 0. I/AW VOLITMB 


Thus for those who fall back on the former deed as the essential reason there 
is neither desire to do, nor effort to do, nor necessity to do this deed or abstain 
from that deed.’- 

According to AbhidhammavatSra there are five Niyamas or orders that 
prevail in the physical and mental realm of which Kamma is one. 

They are: 

1. Kamma Niyama, order of action and result; e.g. good and bad 

deeds produce desirable and undesirable results respectively. 

2. Utu Niyama, physical (inorganic) order; e.g. seasonal phenomena 

of winds and rains, periodical bearing of flowers and fruits, etc. 

3. Bl^a Niyama, order of germs or seeds; e.g. similar seeds producing 

ninii1fl.r fruits, rice producing from rice-seed, sugary taste resulting 

from sugar-cane or honey, etc. 

4. Ciilta Niyama, order of mind; e.g. processes of consciousness (Citta 

vithi), etc. . 

5. Dhamma Niyama, order of the norm; e.g. the phenomena occumng 

at the advent of a Bodhisatta in his last birth, gravitation, etc. 

Every phenomenon, mental or physical, could be explained by one of 
these five orders. 

This law of Kamma, it has to be admitted, can neither be proved nor 
disproved exptnmmtaUy. 

What is Kamma 1 ' ' 

The Pali term Kamma — Sanskrit Karma — ^literally means 'action’. Any 
kind of action, whether mental, verbal or physical, is treated as Kamma. Ih 
its ultimate sense Kamma means good and bad volition {Kvsala AhmAa 
GeUma). 

The Buddha says: '1 declare, O Bhikkhus, that volition is Kamma. 
Having willed, one acts by body, speech, and thought.’ 

Every volitional action, except that of a Buddha and an Arahant, is 
called Kamma. The Buddhas and Arahants do not accumulate fresh Kamma, 
as they have destroyed all passions, the root of Kamma. They are delivered 
from evil and good. 

There is no Elamma where there is no consciousness (Nama). Plants, for 
mstance, do not accumulate Kamma. Nor is any action a TCamma which is 
unintentional, for Kamma, as defined above, depends on the volition "that is 
involved in the doing. Any deed which is devoid of willing and intention is, 
therefore, not regarded as Kamma. 

It is evident from the above that in the working of Kanunfl. mind is the 
most important factor. All our actions, words, and thoughts are tinged by the 
moral or immoral type of consciousness e:s^erienced at such particular moments. 

When the mind is unguarded, bodily action is unguarded, speech also is 
un^arded, thought also is imguarded. When the mind is guarded, bodily 
action is guarded, and thought also is guarded. ’ 

IXB 


KAMMA, OB THE BTJDDHIST LAW OE OATTSATION 


163 


‘By mind the world is led, by mind is drawn; 

And all' men own the sovereignty of mind.’ 

‘If one speaks or acts with an evil mind, pain follows, one as the wheel, 
the hoof of the ox.’ 

‘If one speaks or acts with a good mind, happiness follows one as the shadow 
bhat never departs.’ 

This immaterial mind is capable of producing tremendous changes in the 
external world. For instance, the most wonderful and powerful machines 
. that tend to revolutionize the world to^y are the direct results of thoughts 
that originated in the minds o'! great thinkers. 

Kamim and Vipdha. 

According to the Abhidhamma Kamma coxistitutes the twelve types of 
immoral consciousness, eight types of moral consciousness pertaining to the 
Sentient Bealm {Kdmdvacara), five types of moral consciousness pertaining 
to the Bealms' of Form {RUpdvacara), and four types of moral consciousness 
pertaining to the Formless Bealms {ArUpavacam)?- 

The volitional activities of the supramtmdane consciousness (Lokuttara 
Citta) are not regarded as Elamma since they do not cause rebirth. They, on 
the contrary, tend to eradicate passions that condition rebirth.' In the supra- 
mundane consciousness wisdom (Pafiiid) is predominant, whilst in the ordinary 
types of consciousness volition (Cetona) is predominant. 

The nine types of moral consciousness pertaining to the Beahns of Forms 
and to the Formless Bealms are the five Bupavacara and the four Arupavacara 
Jhanas (Ecstasies). They are purely mental. • 

Words and deeds are caused by the remaining twenty types of conscious- 
ness. Verbal actions are done by mind by means of speech. Bodily actions 
are by the mind through the instrument of the body. Purely mental actions 
have no other instrument than the mind. 

These twenty-nine types of consciousness are called Kamma because they 
have the power to produce their due effects {Vipdka) quite automatically, 
independent of any external agency. Just as every volitional activity is 
accompanied by its due effect. 

Those t3rpes of consciousness one experiences as inevitable consequences 
of one’s good and bad thoughts are called resultant consciousness (Vipaka). 
The twenty-three types of resultant consciousness pertaining to the Sentient 
Bealm, the five types of resultant consciousness pertainiug to the Bealms of 
Form and the four types of resultant consciousness pertaining to the Formless 
Bealms are called the Vipaka or fruition of Kamma. 

The external differences such as health, wealth, sickness, poverty, etc. 
are the Vipakanisamsa — consequences. 

A mango seed, for instance, is like the Elamma; mango fruit is like the 
Vipaka, effect; the leaves and flowers are like the Vipakanisamsa. 


1 See Compendia of Philoaopliyf Ch- 1. 


164 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


Kamma, therefore, does hot necessarily mean only past actions; it may be 
both past and present actions. 

For instance, at the moment of giving something to the poor, I experience 
a good thought which will have its reaction at any opportune moment in the 
form of a gift from another. On receiving the gift I experience a . good con- 
sciousness which is the result of the past good thought of mmc. 

We plant a seed today. Sooner or later wo will be able to reap its fruits. 
In the same way, according to the law of Kamma, every good and bad thought 
will produce its reaction when a suitable occasion arises. 

TCnivinifl. is actioh, and Vipaka, fruit, is its reaction. It is not fate. It is 
not predestination which is imposed on us by some mysterious unknown . 
power, to which we must helplessly submit otnsolves. It is one’s bum doing 
which reacts on one’s own self. It is a law in itself. In other words, it is a 
law of cause and effect in the ethical realm. 

We have, for instance, the freedom to put our hand into the fire or not. 
But when once we put our hand, the burning is inevitable. In the same way 
we have complete freedom to do any act, but the reaction is inevitable. 

Hence, it is as clear as daylight that the doctrine of Kamma is the very 
opposite of fatalism. This just doclarine holds that man can control his 
future by creating now what will produce good effects in the future. 

It is this doctrine of Kamma which the mother teaches her child when 
she says; ‘Be good and you will bo happy, and others will love you. But 
if you are bad, you will be unhappy, and others will hate you,* 

The Samyutta Nikaya says: 

‘According to the seed that’s sown, 

So is the fruit ye reap therefrom. 

Doer of good will gather good. 

Doer of evil, evil reaps. 

Sown is the seed, and thou shalt taste 
The fruit thereof. ’ ^ 

What is the Cause of Kamma 1 

This so-called ‘I’, which is composed of mind and matter, is compelled 
to act. It receives impressions from internal and external stimuli. Sensa- 
tions arise thereby, and owing to lack of right understanding resulting from 
latent Ignorance and Craving, one accumulates deeds which consequently 
produce rebirth in manifold states. 

Evil acts lead to inisery, good acts lead to happiness. Nevertheless, 
good actions are necessary to escape this cycle of rebirth. 

A drowning man would tenaciously cling on to a corpse which, ordinarily, 
he would detest, and save himself. After his escape he would no longer cling 
to it but throw it ,away. Even so a person would do good to escape this cycle 
of birth and death. After gaining Deliverance he would no more accumulate 


* Compare tbe Biblical saying, ‘As thou sowest thou dxalt reap’. 



KAMMA, OR THE BUDDHIST DAW OE CAUSATION 


165 


fresh Kammic activities whioh'produce rebirth. He will be beyond good and 
evil. 

Not knowing tilings as they truly are does one accumulate Kamma. No 
Kamma is accumulated by him who has completely eradicated his craving 
^.and has understood things as they truly are. 

The Doer of Kamma. 

Who. is the doer of Kamma ? Who reaps the fruit of Karnmn. ? ‘Is it a 
sort of accretion about a soul, as is taught in Hinduism, which the soul, a part 
of the Divine Essence, builds about itself ? ’ 

Says the Venerable Buddhaghosa Thera in the Visuddhi Magga: 

‘No doer is there who does the deed 
Nor is there one who feels the fruit; 

Constituent parts alone roll on ’ 

In the ultimate sense {Paramattha Saccena) a Buddhist cannot conceive of 
any unchanging entity, any being in the form of a Deva, a man or an animal. 
These external forms are merely the temporary manifestations of the invisible 
Kammic force. ‘Being Ms only a term used for conventional purposes. Strictly 
speaking, what we call a ‘being’ is nothing but a mere composition of mind 
and matter. 

Matter, according to Buddhism, is merely a manifestation of forces and 
qualities. Mind, too, is nothing beyond a complex compound of fleeting mental 
states. Each unit of consciousness consistsbf three phases — genesis (Uppada), 
development (Thiti), and dissolution (Bhahga). One imit of consciousness 
perishes only to give birth to another. The subsequent thought-moment is 
neither the same as its predecessor, because it is not absolutely identical, nor 
entirely another, being the same stream of Kamma energy. 

. We Buddhists believe that there is no actor apart from action, no perceiver 
apart from perception, or, in other words, no conscious subject behind 
consciousness. 

Who, then, is the doer of Kamma ? What experiences Kamma ? 

Volition or will {Getana) is itself the doer, -Feeling {Vedana) is itself the 
reaper of the fruits of Kamma. Apart from these mental states there is none 
to sow and none to reap. 

Just as, says the Venerable Buddhaghosa, in the case of these elements of 
a matter that go under the name of tree, as soon as at any point the fruit 
springs iq), it is then said ‘the tree beam fruit’ or ‘thus the tree has fiructified’ ; 
so also in the case of groups (Khandas) which go under the name of Deva or 
man when a fruition of happiness or misery springs up at any point, then it is 
said ‘that Deva or man is happy otjniserable’. Strictly speaking, there is 
neither a sower nor a reaper besides the volition and the feeling. 

Where is Kamma “i 

‘Stored within the psycho (mind)’, says a certain writer on psycho- 
analysis, ‘but usually inaccessible and to be reached only by some, is the 
whole record, without exception, of every experience the individual has ever 



166 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


passed through, every influence felt, every impression received. The sub- 
conscious mind is not only an indelible record of individual experiences but also 
retains the impress of primeval impulses and tendencies which .so far from 
being outgrown as we fondly deem in civilized man, are subconsciously active 
and apt to break out in disconcerting strength at unexpected moments.’ ' 

Buddhists would make the same assertion but with a slight modification. 
Not stored within the psyche, would we say, for there is neither a receptacle 
nor a storehouse in this ever-changing complex machinery of man but depen- 
dent on the Five Groups (Pancakkhanda) or the flux is every experience the 
individual has passed through, every influence felt, every impression received, 
every characteristic, divine, human or brutal. In short, the whole Kamma 
■ force is dependent on the flux, ever ready to manifest itself in multifarious 
phenomena as occasion arises. 

‘Where, Eeverend Sir, is Kamma?’ questions King Milinda from the 
Venerable Nagasena. 

‘0 Maharaja,’ replies the Venerable Nagasena, ‘Kanmia is not said to be 
stored somewhere in this fleeting consciousness or in any other part of the 
body. But dependent on mind and matter it rests manifesting itself at the 
opportune moment, just as mangoes are not said to be stored somewhere in the 
mango tree, but dependent on the mango tree they lie springing up in due 
season.’ 

Just as wind or fire is not stored in any particular place, even so Kamma 
is not stored anywhere within or without this body. 

Kamma is an individual force, and is transmitted from one existence to 
another. It plays the chiefest part in the moulding of character and explains 
that marvellous phenomenon of Genius. The clear understanding of this 
doctrine is essential for the welfare of the world. 

The Working of Kamma. 

The working of Kamma is not a subject which could be easily grasped 
by the ordinary intellect. Only a Buddha can fully comprehend this intricate 
law. In order to understand the working of Kamma it is necessary to get 
some idea of the process of consciousness (Citta Vithi) according to the 
Abhidhamma. 

The subject, the consciousness, receives objects from within and without. 
When a person is in a state of profound sleep his mind is said to be vacant, or, 
m other words, in a state of Bhavanga. We«e^erience such a subconscious 
state when our minds do not respond to external objects. This subconscious 
state or the flow of Bhavanga is interrupted when objects enter the mind. 
The Bhavanga consciousness, which one always experiences as long as it is 
uninterrupted by stimuli, vibrates for two thought-moments and passes away. 
Then the consciousness of the kind that apprehends sensation {iPancadvard- 
vajjana) arises and ceases. At this stage the natural flow is checked and 
turned towards the object. Immediately after which there arises and ceases 
visual consciousness (Cakkhu viMana), but yet knows no more about it. This 



KAMMA, OB THE BTTDDHJBT LAW OF OATISATION 


167 


sense operation is followed by a moment of reception of the object so seen 
{SampaiiMtuma). Next comes the investigating faculty {Santirana) or a 
momentary examination of the object received. Affair this comes that stage 
of representative cognition termed the determining consciousness {Votihapana) 
on which depends the subsequent psychologically important stage — appercep- 
tion — OT-Javana. This Javana stage usually lasts for seven thought-moments, 
or, at times of death, five. The whole process which happens in an infinitesimal 
part of time ends with the registering consciousness {Tadalambana), lasting for 
two thought-moments. It must be understood that at this important apper- 
ceptional stage one does both good and bad Kamma. 

‘The simile of the mango tree may here serve to illustrate the above 
process. A man, lost in deep sleep, is lying at the foot of a mango tree with 
his head covered. A wind now stirs the branches, and a fruit falls besides the 
sleeping man. He is in consequence aroused from dreamless slumbers. He 
removes his head-covering in older to ascertain what has awakened him. He 
sees the newly fallen fruit, picks it up and examines it. Apprehending it to 
be a fruit with certain constitutive attributes observed in the previous stage 
of investigation, he eats it, and then, replacing his head-covering, once more 
resigns himself to sleep. 

‘The dreamless sleep corresponds to the unperturbed current of the stream 
of being {Blmvanga), The striking of the wind against the tree is like the 
“past” life-moment, during which the object enters the stream and passes 
down with it, without perturbing it. The swaying of the branches in-that wind 
represents the vibration of the stream of being. The falling of the fruit 
corresponds to the arrest of interruption of being, the moment at which the 
stream is “cut off” by thought; the waking of the man to the awaking of 
attention in the act of cognition on occasion of sense reaction of sight. The 
picking up of the fruit is comparable to the operation of receiving; inspection 
of it recalls the examining function. The simple apprehension of the- fruit 
as such, with certain constitutive attributives of its own, corresponds to the 
discriminative or determining stage; the eating of the fruit resembles the act 
of apperception. Finally, the swallowing of the last morsels that are left in 
the mouth corresponds to the operation of retention, after which the- mind 
subsides into more vital process, even as the man once more falls asleep.’ 
(Compendium of Philosophy by S. Z. Aung, Introductory Essay, p. 30.) 

If, for instance, A liits B, the latter will consequently esperience some pain. 
This unpleasant sensation is the result of some past bad Kamma. If B is not 
a self-oontrolled person, he will, through his indiscrimination, engender 
thoughts of hatred towards A. The generating of those thoughts occurs in the 
Javana process. This doing of bad Kamma is his own, even if it be admitted 
that A acted as the cause, and he, too, did a bad Kamma on his part. Here 
comes the question of freewill in BuddhisnT. 

The evil effect of the first Javana thought-moment being the weakest, B 
may reap it in this life itself. This is called ‘immediately effective’ {DHtha- 
dhammavedaniya) Kamma. 



168 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


If it did not oporoto in this life, tho Kamma bocomos'inoffoctivo’ (Ahosi). 

Tho next weakest is tho seventh thought-moment. Tho evil olTcct of 
which B may roap in tho second birth. This is called 'subsequently effective' 
(Opapajjavedaniya) Kamma. 

This too becomes ineffective if it did not operate in tho second birth. 

The effects of tho intormediato thought-moments may take place ot any 
time until B attains Nibbana. Tho Kamma of this typo is known os 'in- 
definitely effective’ {AparSpariyavedaniya). 

Tho working of good Kamma is similar to tho above. Tho effect of o good 
Kamma generally occurs in tho form of a pleasant sensation. 

It is evident from this classification of Kamma that there are 
actions which may produce their duo effects in this vOry life, or in a subsequent 
life, or in any life in tho course of one’s wanderings in Samsura. 

The above-mentioned classification of Kamma is with reference to tho 
time in which effects are worked out. 

Tho following classification is according to ‘function’. 

Every birth is conditioned by a past good or bad Kamma which pre- 
dominates at tho moment of death. Tho Kamma that conditions tho future 
birth is called Reproductive or Janaka Kamma. 

Our forms are but tho outward manifestations of the invisible Kamniic 
force. This all-pervading force carries with it all our characteristics, which 
usually lie Intent, but may arise to the surface at unexpected moments. Hence 
it is difficult to judge another as long as one is a w'orldling. A person may 
safely be judged by tho thought he experiences at a particular moment. As to 
his future one cannot definitely say. 

The death of a person is merely 'the temporary end of a temporary 
phenomenon’. Though the present form perishes another form which is 
neither the same nor entirely different takes place according to tho thought 
that was pow'erful at tho death moment, ns tho Kammic force which propels 
the life-flux still amwives. It is this last thought, wliich is teclmicoUy called 
Reproductive Kamma, that determines the state of a person in his subsequent 
birth. This may bo either good or a bad Kamma. 

Now another Klamma may step forward to assist or maintain tho action of 
this Reproductive Kamma. Just as this Kamma has tho tendency to 
strengthen the Reproductive Kamma some other action, which tends to 
weaken, interrupt, or retard the fruition of the Reproductive Kamma, may 
step in. Such actions are respectively termed ‘Supportive’ (Vpatihamblidka) 
and Counteractive’ {UpaptdaJca) Kamma. 

According to the Law of Kamma -the potential energy of the Reproductive 
Kamma could be nullified by a more powerful opposing Kamma of the past, 
which, seeking an opportunity, may quite unexpecte<fly operate, just as a 
powerful opposing force can check the path of the flying arrow and bring it 
own to the ground. Such action is‘ called ‘Destructive’ or Upaghataka 

mma, which is more effective than tho above two in that it not only 
obstructs but also destroys the whole force. 



KAMMA, OR THE BUDDHIST LAW OF CAUSATION 


169 


There is another classification of Kamma according to 'the priority of 
effect*. The first is Qaruka which means weighty or serious. This TCnniTnn. 
which is either good or bad produces results in this life or in the next for 
certain. If good, it is purely mental as in the case of JJianas (Ecstasies). 
Otherwise it is verbal or bodily. The five kinds of Weighty Kamma are : 

(1) Matricide, 

(2) Parricide, 

(3) The murder of an Arahant, 

(4) The wounding of a Buddha, 

(5) The creation of a schism in the Safigha. 

. Permanent Scepticism {Niyata MicchadittM) is also termed one of the 
Weighty Kammas. 

If, for instance, any person were to develop the Jlidnas and later were to 
commit one of these heinous crimes, his good Kamma would get obliterated 
by the powerful evil Kamma. His subsequent birth will be conditioned by the 
evil Kamma in spite of his having gained the Jhanas earlier. 

In the absence of Weighty Kamma to condition the future birth', a Death- 
proxhnate {Asanna) Kamma might operate. This Kamma is that which one 
does immediately before the dying moment. Owing to the great part it 
plays in determining the birth much importance is attached to this death-bed 
Kamma in almost all Buddhist countries. The custom of reminding the dying 
man of his good deeds and making him do good deeds on lus death-bed still 
prevails in Ceylon, Burma and other Buddhist countries. 

Sometimes a bad person may die happily and receive a good birth, if 
fortunately he remembers or does a good act at the last moment. This does 
not mean that although he enjoys a good birth he will be exempt from the 
effects of the evil deeds he accumulated during his lifetime. 

At times a good person may die unhappily by suddenly remembering an 
evil act of his or by harbouring some unpleasant thought, perchance compelled 
by unfavourable circumstances. Such unhappy ends are sometimes due to 
ignorance of the relatives who may molest or worry the dying person. 

As a rule the last thought-moment is conditioned by the general conduct 
of a person. However, it is always advisable to remind the dying person of 
his good deeds and turn his attention away from all worldly bonds and worries. 

‘Habitual’ {Acinna) Kamma is the next in priority of effect. It is the 
Kamma that one habitually performs and recollects and for which one has a 
great liking. 

Habits, whether good or bad, become second nature. They tend to form 
the character of a person. At leisure moments one often thinks of one’s 
habitual characteristics. In the same way at the death moment, unless 
infiuenced by other circumstances, one, as a rule, recalls to mind one’s habitual 
characteristics. 

A miser will instantly think of his gold and may not be able to detach his 
mind from his cherished possessions. A drunkard will be worried with his 
glass of liquor. A social worker will be interested in his social activities. A 



170 


B. 0. LAW VOLTJME 


spiritiiul advisor will bo always intont on his spiritual work. Thus we may bo 
dominated by o\u’ habitual doings, especially at our death moments, in spite 
of the attempts of the friends and relatives to turn our attention otherwise. 

The last categoiy is the'Cunnilativo’ (Kaiatta) Kamma in which is included 
all that cannot be brought under the above-mentioned three. This is, as it 
were, the reserve fund of a particular being. 

The last classification is according to the place in which the Kamma effects 
transpire, namelj': 

(1) Evil Kamma {Akusala) which may ripen in the Sentient Existence 

{Kamalpka). 

(2) Good Kamma {Kvsala) wliioh may ripen in the Sentient Existence. 

(3) Good Kamma {Kvsala) which ina}' ripen in the Bealm of Form 

{R^paloka). 

■ (4) Good Kamma which may ripen in the Formless Eoalms (Arupaloka). 


(1) Evil Kamma . — 

There are ten evil Kaminas which are caused by deed, word, and thought. 
Three are caused by deed — ^namely: Idlling, stealing, and unchastity. Four 
are caused by word — namely : l 3 nng, slandering, harsh speech, and frivolous 
talk. Three are caused by mind — ^namely: covetousness, ill-will, and false 
view. 

Killing means the destruction of any living being. The Pali term used is 
Pami which means that which breathes. According to Abhidhamma Pana 
is the psychophysical life confined to a particular existence. The qiuok 
destruction of this life force without allowing it to run its natural or due 
coimse is Pandtipaia, Animals are also included in living beings, but not plant 
life. In plants there is a kind of life bom of heat but not that kind of vitality 
bom of Kamma found in men and animals. 

(2) Good Kamma which may ripen in the Sentient Existence: — 

There are ten moral actions — ^namely, generosity {Dana), morality {8lla), 
meditation {Bhdvand), reverence {Apaedyara), service {Veyyavacca), trans- 
ference of merit {PaUiddna), rejoicing in other’s merit {Pattdnumodana), heating 
the doctrine {Dhammasavana), expounding the Dhamma {Dhammadesana), 
straightening one’s views {DiUliijjv Kamma). 

These ten are sometimes treated as twelve. In which case ‘Praising 
others’ good works ’, and ‘ Talting the Tliree Eefuges ’ {Sarana), and Mindfiilness 
{Anvssaii) are used instead of straightening one’s views. 

(3) Good Kamma which may ripen in the Bcalms of Form : — 

(i) Moral consciousness of the first stage of Jlidna. This occurs 

together with initial application, sustained application, pleasur- 
able interest, happiness, and one-pointedness. 

(ii) Moral consciousness of the second stage of Jhdna. This occurs 

together with sustained application, pleasurable interest, happi- 
ness, and one-pointedness. 



KAMMA, OR THE BUDDHIST LAW OF OATTSATION 


171 


(iii) Moral consciousness of the third stage of Jhana. This occurs 

together with pleasurable interest, happiness, and one-pointed- 

ness. 

(iv) Moral consciousness of the fourth stage of Jhana. This occurs 

together with happiness and one-pointedness. 

(v) Moral* consciousness of the fifth stage of Jhana. This occurs 

together with equanimity and one-pointedness. 

These Jhanas have their corresponding effects in the Eealms 

of Form. 

(4) Choi Kamma which may ripen in the Formless Beahns ; — 

These are the four Ariipa Jhanas which have their corresponding effects in . 
the Arupa (Formless) Bealms. 

(i) Moral consciousness dwelling in the infinity of space {AkasanaH- 

cayatana). 

(ii) Moral consciousness dwelling in the infinity of consciousness 

( Vinnanadayaiana). 

(iii) Moral consciousness dwelling on nothingness {AkiUcailnayatana). 

(iv) Moral consciousness wherein perception neither is nor is not {Neva 

sailna Nasannayafana). 

Nature of Kamma. 

Is one boimd to reap all that one has won in just proportion? Not 
necessarily. In the AAguttara Nikaya the Buddlja states: — 

‘If any one says, 0 Bhikkhus, that a man must reap according to his 
deeds, in that case, 0 Bhikkhus, there is no religious life nor is an opportunity 
afforded for the entire extinction of sorrow (Dukkha). But if any one says, 
0 Bliikkhus, that what a man reaps accords with his deeds, in that case, 

0 Bliikkhus, there is a religious life and an opportunity is afforded for the 
entire extinction of sorrow.’ 

In Buddhism, therefore, there is every possibility to mould one’s Kamma. 
Here one is not always compelled by an iron necessity. 

Although it is stated that neither in heaven, nor in the recesses of a cave, 
there is any place in the world where one could escape evil Kamma, yet one 
is not bound to pay all the past arrears of one’s Kamma. In such case no 
escape is possible. One is neither the master nor the servant of this Kamma. 
Even a most vicious person can by liis own effort become the most virtuous 
person. We are always becoming something, and that something depends on 
our own actions. We may at any moment change for the better or for the 
worse. Even the most sinful person should not be discomaged or despised, 
on account of his evil nature. We must have compassion on him for we must 
have also been in that same position at a certain stage. As we have changed 
for the better he may also change perhaps sooner than oui’selves. Who can 
say what good Kamma he has in store for him 1 Who knows his potential 
goodness ? 



172 


B. C. hkW VOIiTTME 


Who thought that Afigulimala, a highway robber and a murderer of more 
than a thousand of his fellow brethren, would become a Saint, judging him by 
his external deeds ? But he did become an Arahant and erased, so to say, all 
his past misdeeds. 

Who imagined that Alavaka, the fierce demon who feasted on the flesh 
of human beings, would over become a Saint ? ‘Yet he did give up his carni- 
vorous habits and attain the first stage of Sainthood. 

Who believed that Asoka who was stigmatized Canda, the wicked, on 
account of the atrocities caused by him to expand his empire, would ever win 
the noble title — Dhammasoka or Asoka the Righteous? But he did completely 
change his career to such an extent that today, ‘amidst the tens of thousands 
of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and 
graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of 
Asoka shines and shines almost alone, a star’. (H. G. Wells in his ‘ Outline of 
History’.) 

These arc a few instances to illustrate the fact that a complete reformation 
of character could be brought about by our own actions. 

It may also happen that in some cases a lesser evil may produce its due 
efiect, while the effect of a greater evil may be minimized. 

The Buddha says; — 

‘Here, 0 Bhikkhus, a certain person is not disciplined in body, is not 
disciplined in morality, is not disciplined in mind, is not disciplined.in wisdom, 
is with little good and less virtue, and lives painfully in consequences of 
trifles. Even a trivial evil act committed by such a person will lead him to 
a state of misery.’ 

‘Hero, 0 Bhikkhus, a certain person is disciplined in body, is disciplined 
in morality, is disciph’ncd in mind, is disciplined in wisdom, is with much good, 
is high-sotilcd, and lives without limitation.’ 

* A similar evil act committed by such a person ripens in this life itself 
and not oven a small effect manifests itself (after death), not to. say of a 
great one.’ 

‘It is as if, 0 Bhikkhus, a man were to put a lump of salt into a small 
ctip of water. What do you think, O Bhikkhus? Would now the small 
amount of water in this cup become saltish and undrinkable ? ’ 

‘Yes, Lord.’ 

‘And why?’ 

‘Because, Lord, there was very little water in the cup, and so it became 
saltish and undrinkable by this lump of salt.’ 

'Suppose, 0 Bhikldwis, a man were to put a lump of salt into the river 
Gangc.s. What think you, 0 Bhikkhus? Would the river Ganges become 
jialtish and undrinkable by the lump of salt ? ’ 

‘Nay, indeed, Lord.’ 

‘And why not ?’ 

‘Because, Ijord, the mass of water in the river Gangc.s is great, and so it 
would not Ijocomc saltish and undrinkable.’ 



KAMMA, OB THE BUDDHIST LAW OF CAUSATION 


173 


. *Li exactly the same way, 0 Bhikkhus, we may have the case of a person 
who does some slight evil deed which brings him to a state of misery; or 
again, 0 Bhikkhus, we may have the case of another person who does the 
same trivial misdeed, and expiates in the present life. Not even a small 
effect manifests itself (after death), not to say of a great one.’ 

* We may have, 0 Bhikkhus, the case of a person who is cast into a prison 
for a half-peimy, penny, or for a hundred pence ; or, again, 0 Bhikkhus, we 
may have the case of a person who is not cast into prison for a half-penny, 
for a penny, or for a hundred pence.’ 

■Who, 0 Bhikkhus, is cast into prison for a half-penny, for a penny, or for 
a hundred pence ? ’ • 

‘Whenever, 0 Bhiklihus, any one is poor, needy and indigent: he, O 
Bhikkhus, is cast into prison for a half-penny, for a penny, or for a hundred 
pence.’ 

‘Who, 0 Bhikkhus, is not cast into prison for a half-penny, for a penny, 
or for a hundred pence ? ’ 

‘Whenever, 0 Bhikkhus, any one is rich, wealthy, and affluent: he, 0 
Bhikkhus, is not cast into prison for a half-penny, for a penny, or for a hundred 
pence.’ 

‘In exactly the same way, 0 Bhikkhus, we may have the case of a person 
who does some slight evil deed which brings him to a state of misery; or again, 
0 Bhikkhus, we may have the case of another person who does the same trivial 
misdeed, and expiates in the present life. Not even a small effect manifests 
itself (after death), not to say of a great one.’ 

Good begets good, but any after repentance on the part of the doer deprives 
hiin of due desirable results. 

In the working of Kamma it should be understood that there are malefi- 
cent and beneficent forces to counteract and support this self-operating law. 
Birth (Oati), time or conditions (Eala), beauty {Upadhi), and effort (Payoga), 
are such aids and hindrances to the iiuition of Kamma. 

If, for instance, a person is bom in a noble family or in a state of happiness, 
his fortunate birth will act sometimes as a hindrance to the fruition of Us evil 
Kamma. 

If, on the other hand, he is born in a state of misery or in an unfortunate 
family, hie imfavomrable birth will provide an easy opportunity for his evil 
Kamma to operate. 

This is technically known as Gati SampaUi (Favourable birth) and Oati 
Vipaiti (Unfavornable birth). 

An unintelligent person, who, by some good Kamma, is bom in a royal 
family, will, on account of his noble parentage, be honoured by the people. 
If the same person were to have a less fortunate birth, he would not be similarly 
treated. 

Beauty (Upadhi Sampatti) and ugliness (Upadhi Vipatti) are two other 
factors that act as aids and hindrances to the working of Elamma. 



174 


B. C. LAW* TOIjUME 


If by some good Kamma a person obtains a good birth, but is unfortunately 
defonned, he -will not be able to enjoy the beneficial results of his good Kanuna. 
Even a legitimate heir to the tlirone may not perhaps be raised to that exalted 
position if ho happens to be physically deformed. 

Beauty, on the other hand, wiEbe a valuable asset to the possessor. A' 
good-looking son of a poor parent vdil perhaps attract the attention of a kind 
person, and might be able to distinguish himself through his influence. 

Favourable and unfavourable time or occasion {Kola Sampotti and Kala 
Vipalli) arc another two factors that aid or impede the working of Kamma. 

In the case of a famine all without exception will bo compelled to suffer 
t he same fate. Hero the unfavourable conditions open up the possibilities for 
evil Kamma to operate. The favourable conditions, on the other hand, uill 
l)rcvcnt the operation of evil Kamma. 

The fourth and the last is effort {Payoga). If a x>erson makes no effort to 
cxirc himself of a disease or to save himself from his difficulties, his evil Kamma 
will find suitable opportunity to produce its due effects. If, oh the other hand, 
he endeavours on his part to surmormt his difficulties, his good Kamma will 
come to his succour. 

IVlicn shipuTccked in deep sea, the Bodliisatta Maha Janaka made an 
effort to save liimsclf, wliilst the others prayed to the gods and loft their fate in 
thoir hands, the result was that the Bodhisatta escaped whilst the others got 
drowned. This is technically Imown as Payoga Sampatti and Payoga Vipatti. ' 

It is evident from those counteractive and supportive factors that Kamma 
is sometimes influenced by external circumstances. 

It is tin's doctrine of Kamma that gives consolation, hope, self-reliance, 
and moral coinage to a*Buddhist. ' 

Wlion the unexpected happens to liim and when ho is beset with difficulties 
almost insiumouutablc and misfortunes almost rmbearable, he consoles liimsolf 
witli tlio thought that tjiey are the results of his own past doings. He realizes 
that the inoiitablo must happen. Ho no doubt reaps what ho has sown; ho 
can at the same time turn up the weeds and sow useful seeds in thoir place, 
for the future is entirety in his hands. Kamma enables liim to shape his 
future as ho wills. 

When the wicked arc successful in every walk of life, wliilst the virtuous 
meet uith ill-luck and are compelled to lead a miserable life, a Buddliist would 
neither accuse another of injustice nor blame the world for its unjust ways, 
since ho knows tbat they are only reaping what' they have sown. The virtuous 
arc thereby not discouraged because they are convinced that thoir good acts 
will have thoir duo effects in sonic future life though not in the present. ^ 

Even the nio.st corrupted jicrson is not condemned in Buddhism. On the 
other hand, ho is loved and shown the way to a jicrfect life. He is assured 
t hat- he has the chance to reform and remodel himself at any moment. Though 
liound to .‘sufier in states of misery, ho ha.s the hope of attaining eternal Peace. 

A Buddhist who is fully convinced of the doctrine of Kamma does not 
j m\ to £uiot her to l>o saved but confidently relics on himself for his salvation. 


KAMMA, OR THE BXTDDHKIT IjAW OF OATTSATION 176 

• • I . 

It is this belief in Kamma that validates his effort and kindles his en- 
thusiasm. It is also this firm belief in Kamma that prompts him to re&ain 
from evil and to do good and be good without being frightened of any punish- 
ments or tempted of any reward. He has no fear of the future, nor does he 
irdread so-called death. ' He is ever land, tolerant, and considerate. 

This Law of Kamma explains the problem of suffering, the mystery of so- 
called fate or predestination of other religions, and above all the inequality of 
mankind. 

As stated earlier, it is a law in itself, but it does not thereby follow that 
there should be a law-giver. Ordinary laws of nature, like gravitation, need 
no law-giver. The Law of Kamma .too demands no law-giver. It operates in 
its own field without the intervention of an external, independent, ruling agency. 

Nobody, for instance, has decreed that fire should bum. ■ Nobody has 
. commanded that water should seek its own level. No scientist has ordered 
that water should consist of H 2 O, and that coldness should be one of its pro- 
perties. These are their intrinsic characteristics. ‘ 

Inherent in Kamma is the power of producing its due effect. The cause 
produces the effect; the effect explains the cause. Seed produces the fruit; 
the fruit explains the seed, as both are inter-related. Even so Kamma and 
its effect are inter-related; ‘the effect already blooms in the cause’. 

Happiness and suffering which are the common lot of humanity are the 
inevitable effects of some cause or causes. There is no doubt of the fact that 
both happiness and suffering have their attendant curses and blessings and 
that they are essential. In that well-known fable the stag admired his horns 
and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came his swift feet saved him; his 
beautiful horns, caught in a thicket, destroyed him. 

But why should these disparities exist? Are they the ‘rewards’ and 
‘punishments’ of an Almighty Being who sits on ah imperial throne in heaven 
above controlling the destinies of the human race. No, they are not. They 
are the due effects of our own good and bad deeds. Our good actions make 
us happy; our evil actions make us miserable. - We ourselves are responsible 
for our happiness and misery. We are the architects of our. own fate. We are 
our own creators. We are our own destroyers. We build our own heavens. 
We build our own hells. 

What we think, speak, and do, become our own. It is these thoughts, 
words, and deeds that assume the name Elamma and pass from life to life, 
exalting and degrading us in the course of oiu* wanderings in Sahisara. 

Says the Buddlia; 

‘Man’s merits and the sins he here hath Avrought: 

That is the thing he owns, that takes he hence. 

That dogs his steps, like shadows in purs.uit. 

Hence let him make good store for life elsewhere. 

Sure platform in some other ftiture world. 

Rewards of virtue on good beings wait.’ 

(‘Kindred Sayings’ — ^Vol. I, p. 98.) 



JIUSLIJI PATKONAGE TO SAJ^SKBIT LEARNING 

By 

Mb. CmxTAHABAX Chakbavabu, M.A., Krishnagar College, Nadia 

That the Muhanunadans took a keen interest in Sanskrit literature iS' 
known from different sources. At the instance of various Muhammadan 
princes a good many Sanskrit texts were translated into Persian and indepen- 
dent treatises came to be written embodying accounts of different phases of 
Hindu culture.^ The importance of those ■vs'orks in the history of Sanskrit 
literature is immense. Some of them deal with Sanskrit texts that are little- 
known or absolutely unknown at the present day. A critical investigation of 
those works by students of Sanskrit is therefore expected to bring to light 
much valuable material. 

It requires, however, to bo noted that the interest the Muhammadans 
took in Sanskrit was manifested through other channels as well. It is noticed 
tliat more than one Muhammadan ruler followed the example of old Hindu 
Icings in honouring scholars versed in Sanskrit and providing material en- 
couragement towards their literary pureuits. It is significant that these rulers 
wore not primarily actuated by the spirit of spreading Islamic culture and 
literature through the medium of Sanskrit. As a matter of fact no attempt 
appears to have been made, like the Parsis and the Christians who had their 
scripture? translated into Sanskrit, to get a Sanskrit version of the Koran or 
the teachings thereof.^ It would thus appear that their activities in this 
direction were the result of a sheer love of knowledge. It will bo noticed 
that of works composed under Muhammadan patronage w’o find only scculor 
works, o.g. poems, dictionaries, grammatical works and w'orks on music, 
erotics and astronomy some of which wore influenced by Persian. 

A complete and systematic account of the various activities of 
Muhammadan princes in provictog encouragement to Sanskrit scholars 
will bo interesting. Documentary evidence in this connection is found 
.scattered mainly in Sanskrit works many of which still remain unpubUshod. 
Some of the works contain passages written to eulogize Muhammadan rulers * 


* Elliot, IJittory of India, V, S70-6; J. J, Modi, Kin/f Akbar'and Pertiian Trawlationn of 
fr'aTwtrifiTooilM, AnnntflortiioDlinndnrkArOrientAl Bcscawh Institute, V, 83-107; M. Z. Siddiqui, 
Tht S’en’icrs of the MtitUtM to the Sanskrit Literature, CoJcutln Roviow, 1933, 215-25; N. 1C. Law, 
I'rowioM'on of Learning in India during Muhammadan Ittde (by Muhammndans), pp. 147-60, 185. 
It is nUo Icamt frosn Srivaro’B ItSJataraAyipl (Pariiii?!®), I, 5. 85-0, thnt Znin-ul>Abidin of 
Koslunir had oUo n niiinbor of SAnskrit ivorkn translated into Persian. 

* or the few Sivnskrit versions of Pervion works ro^ntion may bo mndo of Srlvnm'n KathS- 
lautuka, n Sanskrit rendering of .Tnmi's story of Yusuf uud Zuleikhn (ed. Krivy**>®“t7, Bombay) 
done for the (latisfnetion of Muhammad Shah ot Knslunir. 

Two other works comjwaed at the instaneo of Hindu chiefs may also bo mentionorl: 
(1)1 lrarainti/fl.harafiLht~>, n Sanskrit version of the Akl'lnk-i-Mohrini mndo by Sahibram nt the 
<le-*;ro of Uariavlrosiijiha of Knslimir. (2) Aravyayumhd, n Sanskrit \xr8ion of the Arabian 
Rights (JASn., 1928. p. 4C0). 

* Ind.'pmtisai works are also known to have lywa written for tho same purpose, o.g. 
RaUlHakhJlnacarita (Dfe.Cat.Sanr.MSS. Jnd. Ofiee, 7304), RSJarinoda {Cataloour Cataioeorum. 
I. W2), etc. 



MUSLIM PATRONAGE TO SANSKRIT LEARNING 


177 


either in gratitude for their patronage or "with a view to attract their attention 
to secure the same. ' It is up to students of Sanskrit literature, especially 
those engaged in bibliographical studies, to record pieces .of evidence as they 
meet with them in the course of their studies, so. that a comprehensive account 
r may be drawn up some day; 

Seven years back I presented the information gathered by me in the form 
of an article in Bengali published in the SaMtya Parisat Patrika (44, 39-46). 
This was followed by M. M. .Patkar’s paper Moghul Patronage to Sanskrit 
Learning {Poona Orientalist, III, 164ff.) and recently by a book entitled 
Mmlim Patronage to SanskriticL€aming(Calcutta, 1942)by Dr. J. B. Chaudhmi. 
Fortunately enough all the three cover new grounds and have very little in 
common. Since the publication of my paper in Bengali some fresh materials 
have come to my hands and I present them along with those in the previous 
paper in an Fnglish form i so that they may reach the wide world of scholars 
who may be able to throw more light on the subject by way of supplementing 
facts and identifying some of the little-known cliiefs left unidentified by me. 

Of the Muhammadan princes who honoured and patronized Sanskrit 
scholars we know of at least three who flourished as early as the first half of • 
the fifteenth century. Malik Saluta Sabi or Malik Sarak Sulitan Sabi of 
Hada, near Allahabadj who was the son of Bahadur Malik, seems to have been 
a great patron of Indian music and the literature on it. He collected various 
Sanslcrit works on music and assembled scholars from different directions 
making grants. of lands and gifts of gold, cloth, etc. In 1428 A.D. this band 
of scholars at the bidding of the Sahi composed the little-known work, the 
Sangifa^iromam.^ . . " • ; - * 

In Bengal Jelal-ud-din continued the policy of his father Raja GaigieSa 
and demonstrated his appreciation of scholars hke Brhaspati, a deepiyieamed 
man of the time. Brhaspati received six titles from him and there was a 
regular ceremony when the title Rayamukuta was conferred on him.s 


1 In my paper 1 have generally omitted authors dealt -nitb by Patkar and Cliaudhuri (even 
though the names of some of them occurred in my previous paper) except'when I have had some 
fresh materials to be recorded. For the sake of giving complete pictures of Akbar and Shajehan 
I have not, hovrover, omitted Fun^arlka and Gohgadhara, and hove included Nityananda vrhbse 
account is based on that given by Fatkar. Incidentally reference may be made to authors treated 
by Fatkar and Cliaudlmri. Fatkar refers to Rnmacondro, Fundarika, Sura Mi^, Gongadhora, 
Nilakantha and K^adosa of tlie time of Akbar, Sr^a and Budra Kavi of the time of Jehangir, 
Mun!6vnra, Bhagavati Svnmi, Nityononda and Vedahgaraya of the time of Shajehan, ISvoradasa 
and Baghunatha of the time of Aurangzeb. Chaudhuri gives accounts of Bhanukara, Akbaiiya 
Kfilido^, Amrtadatta, Fundarika, Jagannatlia, Harinaiayona, VainSidhars, Caturbhuja and 
Laksmipati of the covirts of Sher Shah, Akbar, Shababuddin, Burhan Klian, Shajehan, Shayasta 
Khan and Muhammad Shah. It 'vrill be seen that direct evidence is not available in every case 
to prove the patronage. 









— ^Monusoript (No. 1713) belonging to the Bojml Asiatic Society of Bengal. 
3 Descriptive Catalogue of Sans. MSS. Ind. Office, H, 954'66. 




17S 


B. C. I1A.W VOLUME 


Znin-til-Abidin (1420-1469) of Kashmir vas another great and reputed 
patron of this period. Besides getting Sanskrit works translated into Persian 
ho took pains to collect manuscripts for scholars at considerable expense.' He 
also brought back scholars presumably driven away previously and granted 
.stipends to thcm.= He himself listened to the recitation of the Togavaiisiha 
of Vulmiki.3 

Besides these Jlandana, the prime minister and protdgd of Almasfihi, 
identified with Hoshang Ghori of Malwa (fifteenth century), composed the 
^p\garamandana,'EaV7/a°, Sarasvata^ and Saiigita° in most of which the patron 
is referred to in glowing terras.^ 

Udayaraja, a court-poet of Muhammad Begarha, Sultan of Gujrat (1458- 
69), was the author of the Eajavinoda, a poem in praise of the Sultan.® 

We may next refer to Salcin Shah, a contemporary of Humayun, who 
honoured Candraldrti. author of the grammatical work, the Sdrasvataprabriyafi 
It was about the same timo that Sabaji Prataparaya (1500-1660 A.D.), 
author of the ParaMirdmapratapa, Bhrgwvamialidvya, etc., flourished. Ho 
was a protdgd of Burhan Nizam Shah of Alm^adnagar who conferred on Sabaji 
the title of Prataparaya.’ 


B — 8r!vftra’B Rajatarangin^'i, I, 6. 79. 

Prcriotisly Silcandnr Shnh is statod to h&vo burnt tho nmnuscripts nnd scliolnrs fled vrith tho 
innnuBcript.s they Itnd eo Hint Kashmir was practically depleted of this cultural treasure. 

vvTsrrdl svr 1 

BfiRg Vtn: J 

f^«Tix:5q t 

TfCdl" fvEIJid B— 6rlvartt, op, cil,, I, 

I. , '* 

u wrq ^«or?rR 1 




^vynit<(ciw*hr e— Jonnruja’s RajatarangiiH, 1048, 1050. 

’ vfk cBRi nifrcis 1 


4:rBTT I-Srlvam, op. cil„ I. 5. SO. 


* P. K. GoJo, .Tflin Antiquary, IX. 91-94, 

P. K. Qodn, Journal of the University of Bombay, DC. 101-15. 




• An 


, — Bolvallair, S};sUrn$ cf Sansl-rit Grammar, p, 09, f.n, 

t-*t UK v..tnrhif Oriental liwareh In^iUuS^, XXIV, 15CfT. 


2. 


I4h 




MTJSIiUX PATRONAGE TO SANSKRIT LEARNING 


179 


But among these patrons the name of Akhar prohahlj’ stands foremost. 
It T^as under the orders of Akbar Sahi that GaAgadhara composed his NUisara.'^ 
It was presumably at his instance thatPun^rflta Vitthala wrote the Nartana- 
nirnaya.^ The same scholar composed the Sadragacandroddya imder the 
auspices of Burhan Khan Faruki.^ The Ahbarasdhiir'hgdradarpa'm was also 
■vvritten under his orders by Padmasundara on whom great honour was bestowed 
by this illustrious Muhammadan ruler.* It was again Akbar who seems to 
have taken the initiative in disseminating the knowledge of Persian and to 
some extent the culture represented by it among the people of India. So he got 
Krsndasa to compile a Persian Grammar in Sanslmt entitled Para-sipraMia 
and also a lexicographical work of the same name.^ 

Various scholars received titles from him. He conferred the title of 
Jagadguru^ on Narayapabhatta, a great scholar and author of many books, 
who may not unlikely be identical with a scholar of the same name referred to 
in the Ain-i-AJcbarV Nrsimha, father of Raghunatha, author of the MnKUrta- 
mala, received the title of Jyotirvitsarasa from him on the occasion of the 
occupation of the fort of Aseri.® Tliis Nrsimha may be the same person as 
Narsing mentioned in the Ain-i-Akbanfi Akbar is stated to have honoured 
and bestowed the title of Upadhyaya on Bhanucandra, author of an incomplete 
commentary on the Kadamban of Bapabhatta.^® Siddhacandra who completed 


1 Deso. Cat, Sana, MSS, Aa, Soo. Seng,, VH, 6606. 

^ B— B. L. Mitra, Noticea Sana, MSS,, VIII, 2680. 

An account of the work in Bengali bos been given by 0. C. GanguU in the Earapraaada- 
aathvardhanalekhamala, I, 7-13. For a chronology of the works of Vltthola of. P. K. Gode, 
Journal of Mvaic Academy, Vl-Viii, iff. 

3 Introductory verses 7>8 of the edition of the work (Bombay, 1912). 

fsnq.Bg 1 

II ® edition of the work published in the 

Ganga Oriental Series (Bikaner, 1943). Also see introduction, p. xxii. 

3 Edited by Weber (Berlin, 1887). Detailed account in Ind, Ant. (1912, pp. 44ff.). One 
MS. of the lexicographical work is found in the Boyal Asiatic Society of Bengal. 



— ^BASB Manuscript. 


6 Dese. Oat. Sana. MSS. Aa. Soo. Seng., HI, Preface p. xxviii. 
^ Ind. Hiat. Quart., XIH , 34. 





— Deae. Cat, Sana. MSS, Aa. Soe. Batg„ m, p. 707. 


» Ind. Biat. Quart., imi, 33. 

Htlrfk Nl^*5 l — introductory verse. 

Vlfirenf ^ I— Colophon. 




ISO 


B. C. TMTV VOLT7MK 


the Avork of Bhanucandra -vras tlic recipient of the title SusjTilmnia (?) from 
him .1 Nilakantha, the author of the Tajik, also is said to have received 
honours at his hands." 

The patronage of Jehangir, son of Akbar, vras extended, among others to 
GoA’inda barman 3 son of Uaakantha, author of the Tajik, to Ka-vikornapura, 
Avho composed the ParasipadapTakaia at liis instance,^ as alsotoBLcSava Sarmau 
and Baya Paramunanda. Of the last two Keiava appears to have been 
honoured Avith the title Jyoti.sparaya ^ and Paramananda AATOte the astro- 
nomical treatise JaJiafiglrarhiodaratnakara at the instance of Itbar Klinn 
cvidcntlj'' for the satisfaction of Jehangir.® 

It is not IcnouTi if Jehangir was a Sanskritist liimself. A manuscript of 
Vamana’s Kdvyalafikdrasxdra, however, has a seal on it bearing the name 
Salim.’ This indicates that the manuscript belonged to and formed part of 
the librarj^ of Jehangir. 

Johangir’s son Shajehan maintained the tradition of his father and grand- 
father. He Avas the patron of Kavindracarya, Jaganniitha, N’itj'unanda, 
Vcdiihgaraya and ParaSurama. He conferred the title SarA’aAddyamdhana 
on KaA'indracarya, a Sann 3 msin and a great scholar. It is stated that on one 
occasion the latter Avith a largo following waited on Shajehan on behalf of the 
Hindu comraunitj' to protest against the sj^stem of pilgrim tax levied on 
pilgrims vi.siting Benares and Allahabad. It Avas on this occasion that the 
til lo Avas bestowed on him bj* the King in recognition of his A’ast scholarsliip.® 

The great Jagannatha obtained from this King the title Pa^ditaruja ® and 
it has boon supposed that it was Shajehan Avho conferred on a veteran scholar 
named ParaSuruma Mifira the title Vanivilasariij'a.i® Vedafigaraya com- 
posed the Paraslprakasa for his satisfaction.^^ It was at the instance of 


1 

* Knnp, Jlixlory oj Dhanmiutlra, Vol. I, p. 422 ; Pntkar, op, cit. 

• Dtse. Cat, Sana. MSS. Aa, Soc. Bang,, IH, p. 76S. 



— MS. belonging to the Roynl Asintic Socioty of Bongnl. 
‘ Due. Cat. Sans. MSS. Aa. Soc. Bcng.. lU, 2724. 

* .4nnal.« Dhandarl-ar Or. Iteaeardi Jnat., XXIV, p. 22S. 

Kovlndr'icutya List (GoekArnd'a Oriental Series), Foreword, p. iv. 

* Ibid., j). V. 


Concluding portion of 

Ai (Cliftudhuri, .Aftwlim Patronage to Sans. Learning, p. 118). 

** Gopinnth Knviraj, Saraavati Bhnvan Slndiea, U, 1-4. 




•31S. Iselonjring to ils<> Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 


MUSLIM' PATKONAGE TO SANSKEIT LEARNING 


181 


Shajehan and his minister Vasaf Klhan that one Nityananda wrote an astrono- 
mical work, the iSiddJiantasindhu, in 1628 A.D.i It should be noted that there 
is no reference to any royal patronage in another work of the same author, the 
Siddhantaraja,^ composed in 1639 A.D. 

Y’ Beference may now be made to some later and less-known personages. 
Ve^idatta composed the PancataUvwprakS^a^ under orders of the son of 
Miramira, who himself was the author of a Sanslmt dictionary called the 
Asdlatiprdkdia written at the instance of Asalati Khan.* Kalya^amalla 
wrote the Amngaranga, a work on erotics, for the satisfaction of Lad Khan, 
son of Alimad Khan, an ornament of the Lodi dynasty .6 

l^abdaratndvaU, a dictionary of synonyms and homonyms, was composed 
by Mathure^a tmder orders of Mucha Khan, son of I^a Khan in 1666 A.D.® 
One Haricarana Mallika is stated to have composed a poem in mixed Sanskrit 


Tho actual namo of tbo author was Malajit, who got the title VedSngarSya from the 
Emperor of Delhi, apparently Shajehan (Bhondarkar, Report on tho Search of Sana. MSS. in the 
Bombay Presidency during the years 1882-83, p. 36). 



^ NTjf II ^8 II 

— ^Bhandarkar Oriental Besoorch Institute MS. No. 432 of A 1881-82 of the Gav.akamatt^na 
of Nandikc4vara, son of Vedaagaruya. I am indebted for the above extract to Mr. P. E. Code, 
Curator of tho Institute. 

t Peterson, Dcsc. Oat. Sana. MSS. State Library, Vlwar, Extr. No. 600. 
s Ibid., Extr. No. 606. 


u*KTf«w- WTunqf n 

Dcsc. Oat. Sans. MSS. As. Soc. Bcng., VI, 4700A ; B. L. Mitra, Notices Sans. MSS., VI, 1437. 

— ^Aufreoht, Oat. Cadicum Manvser. Biblio. Bodleine, Codices Sanskriticos, 444. 









II 


—Introductory verses 2-3 (Punjab Sanskrit Series, Lahore). 

« Dese. Oat. Sans. MSS. Ind. Office, H, 1016-17 ; B. L. Mitra, Noifees Sans. MSS., HI, 1 106 ; 
Aufrocht, op. cit., 439-40. 




1S2 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


and Pralcrit adorned with rhymes and alliterations which earned him the title 
Knnthnbhnrana from a local chief called Hussain Khan.^ 

The interest tahen by Sluhammndans in Sanskrit is illustrated in other 
directions ns well. Sanskrit happened to have been adopted as an official 
language for some time at least by the IMuhammadan rulers of Kashmir. 
Sanskrit inscriptions have been found on a number of Jluhammadan tombs 
there. One of these on a tomb in the cemetery of Baha’u-d-din Sahib nt 
Srinagar bears a date corresijonding to A.D. 1484.^ 

We loiow at least one [Muhammadan of Bengal recording his achievements 
in Sanslo-it. A stone inscription at Dhurail (in the district of Dinajpur) of 
146j5 6aka era records the construction of a bridge by one Karas IQian, minister 
of ministor.-T, the son of Nirara ja Khan, in the reign of Muhammad Shah.® 

Wo have not much infonnation about Sanskrit written by Muhammadans 
themselves. The names of a few who arc believed to have mditen in Sanskrit 
are given below. To Abdur Bahim Khan Khanan arc attributed tAVO intciesting 
Avorks composed in a curious language — a mixture of Sanskrit and Persian. 
These are the KhclalcmiUtha * and iladanasfakafi A hymn to the Ganges of 
some popularit}- in Bengal is attributed to Daraf Khiin, identified Avith Jarnf 
Khan, who conquered Saptagrama in Bengal.® Several xersos attributed to 
Sayesta Khan are foimd in the Basakalpadnttna of Caturblvuja.^ A Sanslu-it 
letter of Dam Suko has been published recently.® The author of the Asalati- 
prakaia alrcndj’ rofoircd to may bo a Muhammadan, the son of jMiraraira. 


* CRT Asra 

— Candraprabha of Blmrata Mnllikn (Colcuttn, 1200 B.S.), p, 24. 

* .Stein, Kalhana'g Chroniek of the Kinga of Kashmir, Vol. I, p. 130, f.n .2; Z.D.M.G., 
XL,0;/nJ..r!nt.,XX. 1C3. 

* N. S<vnyftl, Lwt of Jiwcr. <n ll.« Afustum of the A'ortndro Research Soeieti/, Rajshahi, p. U. 

* Vcnk.-vtesvftr Strenm Mncliino Press, Bombay, 1008. 

* Cf. and RahimratnSvall, I am indebted for this information to Prof. 

Mnklinmlnl Royclmudhuri. 

* Jctimol As. Soe. Beng., Vol. XM:, 1847, pp, 393n. 

* J. B. Cltnudhuri, op. eit,, p, 00. 

* Adg^r Kibrary Bulktin, Oct., lOtO, May and Oct., 1943. It may not unlikely bo the 
work of KavIndfiAcrisya in who«e /LoKjidralra/pa'frtima it is found incorporated. Another work. 

S&jv*krit version of hi* ^ajm's.'ii}-Ba}:arun under the title Satnudra’ai\gama, may have been 
aomjxi'M by D-ira him«elf or by some Pandit under his supervision {P. K, God", DhStat. j 
IlihiZta.SarK/^if.al't.ytr.rid.ala Quartrrly, vol. 94, pp. 7&-88). 



‘BUDDHAKHETTA’ IN THE APADANA 
By 

Mb. DwuBNDEiiiAL Baktja, M.A. 

It is both from chronological point of view and as a class of poetical 
composition, the Pali Apadana ranks "with the Buddhavamsa and CariyapiiaJca. 
According to the traditional enumeration of the Bu’d^st canorical texts, 
these are reckoned as the last three works of the Khuddaka Nihaya. Even 
from the doctrinal point of view the three works together show the Mahayana 
Buddhism in the making. The Buddhavarnsa, as pointed out by Professor 
Barua,^ lays stress on the panidhdna (mental resolve) of the Bodhisatta to 
become a supreme type of Buddha and on the prediction made as to his success 
in future as Buddha Gotama by the twenty-four Buddhas of the past 
during whose dispensations he had been developing his moral being. The 
Cariyapipika emphasizes upon the triple object of moral efforts {cariya), 
namely, doing good to oneself, doing good to one’s people, and doing good to 
the world at large, and appropriately illustrates the way in which the Bodhisatta 
was fulfilling the ten perfectionary virtues (pammts ox pdramiias), each in three 
degrees of intensity. The Apadana, on the other hand, is, with the exception 
of the two chapters, Buddhapadana and Paccekabuddh&padana, mainly 
concerned with narrating the previous lives of the Theras and Theris who 
attained arahantship and came to self-expression. It also divulges the dif- 
ference between the achievements of a Perfect Buddha, a Paccekabuddha and a 
Perfect Disciple, all of whom are arahants, in respect of spiritual attainments, 
particularly the purity of their nature. It is, however, significant that the 
Dighabhanakas, as Buddhaghosa tells us,® did not include in their list of works 
of the Khuddaka Nikaya, these four books, now found in the Pali canon, 
namely, the Apadana, Buddhavamsa, Gariyapitaka and Khuddakapatha. 

The canonical Apadana was compiled as an appendix to the Thera- 
Thengathd or Psalms of the Early Buddhists. The psalms of some of the 
Theris, e.g, that of Sumedha, as pointed out by Mrs. Rhys Davids and others,® 
contain the elements of the Apadana legends. But the Apadana embodies the 
legends of many Theras whose psahns are not to be foimd in the Theragdthd, 
and does not include the legends of all the Theris whose stanzas find place in 
the Thengatha. The psalm of Theri Yasodhara, whose legend is contained in 
the Apadana, is, however, sadly missed in the Tlmigdtha. 

The Apadanas, ascribed to the Theras and Theris, connect the past 
existences of these Theras and Theris with the present. Thus they display 
at least the two main characteristics, of the Jatakas or Birth-stories of the 
Buddha, namely, the narration of the past life by the Thera or Theri con- 
cerned and the identification of the present hero or heroine with the past. 


^ See Bonia’e article entitled ‘Mahayana in the Making’ in Sir Asutaah Mookctjee Silver 
Jubilee Volumes (Calcutta, 1027), vol. lEE, port 3, pp. 1638. 

- SumaAffalavilasini, port I, p. 16. 

3 Psalms of (he Sislers, Intro., pp. xvii ff. 


1S4 


B. C. LA\r VOITTME 


and as such they may be treated, in a sense, as the Jatakas of the Theras and 
Theris including the Buddha himself ^ The Apadanas nevertheless differ from 
the Jatakas, as they are, lacking in moralizing spirit. Their -whole stress is 
on the works of piety, such as the homage paid to a former Buddha or an 
offering made to him or a Buddha-shrine in the past creating an occasion foi 
forming a mental resolve {puvtidhdnoi) to become an arahant during the dis- 
pensation of Buddha ^akyamuni. Their mental resolve, which was, in one 
way or other, a kind of prayer (patthand or abhipatthand), was augmented bj 
the prediction made by a persdn of authority, namely a Perfect Buddhct 
whom he or she pleased by worship or service {adhikdra). 

The Buddhapadana, or the Tradition of the pre-rious excellent deeds or 
services of the Buddhas, which forms the first chapter of the Apaddna, contains 
a vi-vid and charming description of the BuddhaTchetta. Buddhahhetta is pre- 
cisely a synonym of BuddhabMimi,^ the land of the Buddhas. According to 
Buddhaghosa, the Buddhahhetta is of three kinds : that of his Nativity (jatik- 
liheltam), that of his Ministry (dnahkhettam), and that of his Omniscience 
{visayakkhetlam). Of these, the last-named is infinite and boundless, where 
the Tathagata knows whatever he wishes (yattha yam yam Tathdgato dkahkhati, 
tain tarn jdndii).^ It has been said that the sphere of the Buddha’s omniscience 
is incomprehensible to others.* 

The main interest of the Buddhapadana, it will be seen, centres round the 
romantic conception of the Buddhahhetta, an ideal land of art and beauty. 
It is an ideal educational institution, situated in the midst of the most beautiful 
and sombre natural surroundings, an eternal school, where, in the words of 
Professor Barua,® ‘every one is a teacher and every one a pupil’. Here the 
Buddhas question other Buddhas about their own sphere, the sphere of omni- 
science, and on matters, deep and subtle. The disciples, too, ask the Buddhas, 
and the Buddhas the disciples about things to be known by the disciples them- 
selves. They question each other, and they answer each other. The Buddhas 
and the disciples, the masters and the attendants, the speakers and the audience, 
the teachers and the taught, all are seekers after truth -in this grand Temple of 
Learning. Prankly and rightly they do discuss the things for their self- 
edification. Sldlled in the maintenance of constant self-possession, they dwell 
harmoniously and in peace, and exert themselves to know the unkno-wn, to 
realize the unrealized, and to master over what they have not yet mastered. 
The sphere of knowledge being infinite and boundless, even the Enlightened 
Ones are eager to be more enlightened, nay to be most enlightened. 

This description of the Buddhahhetta is indubiously entirely a creation 
of fine poetic imagination, and its effect is idyllic. The whole poem is com- 


e aamn BuddhSpaUunam’ in ApadSna, vol. I, pp. 290-301. 

^ Cr. Buddhavaipsa, cliap. U, v. 176, 

® VUuddhimagga, vol. H, p, 414; Path of Purity, vol. H, p. 481. 

'■‘’r Jiuddhavioayo na eiuteiabbo; also A«gutlc 

T,; I. 04; Jtrahammga, TiXU. v. 66: XXXI v 125 

‘ Bama. Barhut. Bk. 1 (Stone as a Story-teller) p lo^ 



‘bTTDDHAKHETTA' IK THE APADaNA 


186 


posed in exquisitely elegant verses in Sloka metre which gained popularity 
under the influence of the Bamayana. It is only the first two chapters of the 
Buddhivamsa which bear comparison with it in respect of the imagery, the 
vividness of description, and the impressiveness of the theme itself. In the 
rpoetic conception of the BuddliakJietta, was forestalled the later Mah&yanic 
idea of SuTsTiuvatl, the glorious land of Buddhist Paradise. It may be noted 
that the Apadana of Sariputta gives us a similar description of the earlier 
Asrama institution (assamapada) of the hermit teachers in the midst of which 
stood the leaf-hut {pannasdla) or simple cottage which has been replaced in the 
Buddhapadana by a magnificent edifice (pasdda). Though the description of 
this edifice as a great model of architecture is confessedly imaginary and 
idealistic, one cannot gamsay that in its substratum there were actualities. 

Besides instructions given by the Buddha to his disciples and followers, 
monks and laymen, the Buddhist canonical texts contain instances of the chief 
disciples of the Buddha holding discussions with each other on various topics. 
Thus in the Ana^ana Sutta,^ Moggallana interrogates Sariputta regarding the 
‘undefiled’. The Bathavinlia Suita ^ records a conversation between Sariputta 
and Funna Mantaniputta as to the nature of Nibbana which is compared to a 
journey of King Pasenadi from Savatthi to Saketa, by means of relays of seven 
chariots. The Mahdvedalla Suita 8 also records a series of questions, asked by 
Mahakotthita and answered by Sariputta, on psychological topics, e.g. under- 
standing, consciousness, feeling, perception, etc. On other occasions, Sariputta 
is questioned by Mali§.kotthita as to kamma,*^ yonisamamsikara,^ avijjd and 
uijja,^ the fetters of sense^perception,'^ certain things pronounced by the 
Buddha as indeterminate,® the six spheres of contact,® and the purpose for 
which bhikkhus lead the brahmacariya life.^® Sariputta also questions 
Mahakassapa on the terms didpi and ottdpip- and Anuruddha on sekha,^ and 
Upavana on bo^lvanga?-^ Again, Ananda is mentioned as questioning Sariputta 
regarding soidpattii^^ and as to the reason why some beings are set free in this 
very life while others are not,^® the speedy knowledge of aptness in things 
{htsaladhammesu khippanisanti), and how a bhikkhu may learn new doctrines 
and retain old ones without confusion.^’ 

An Knglish rendering ^® of the Buddhapadana is, for the first time, given 
below so as to draw attention of the Indologists to this piece of composition 
which stands out fts a striking specimen of early Buddhist poetry. 


^ Majjhima-Nik&ya, vol. I, pp. 26ff. 

» Ibid., pp. 292ff. 

® Ibid., vol. in, pp. 176f. 

? Ibid., vol. rV, pp. 162f. 

® A^guUara-Nihaya, vol. H, p. 161. 
Satflyutta-Nikdya, vol. H, pp. 1955. 

15 Ibid., p. 76. 

16 Angullara-NihSya, vol. H, p. 167. 


- Ibid., pp. 1465. 

* Sarnyutttt-Nikaya, vol. H, pp. 112f. 
6 Ibid., pp. 172f. 

6 Ibid., pp. 384f. 

10 I6W.,vol.IV,p.382. 

IS Ibid., vol. V, pp. 174f., 298f. 

1* Ibid., pp. 346, 362. 

10 Ibid., vol. ni, pp. 201f. 


11 Ibid., p. 361; of. also Malalaaekera, Dictionary of Pali Proper Names, s.v. Sariputta. 

IS Much of What was meant to bo signified may be missed by the reader in the translation 
portly for -want of a commentary to gnide^Jhe present trandator, and partly due to his unfamiliarity 
n-ith the technical details of Indian architecture. . . 


186 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


BuddhaeadIlna 

Tin: TKADITION OF THE PBEVIOtrS ESOEHEST X>EEDS OF THE BXTDPBAS 

Translation 

1. Now, Avith a pure mind, attend to the 'Tradition of the previous^ 
excellent deeds of the Buddlias, the innumerable kings of righteousness, 
replete with thirty Perfections.^ 

2. To the supreme enlightenment of the best of the Buddhas, to leaders 
of the world together Avith their Orders, I bowed down paying homage -with 
joined hands.^ 

3. Bi the Buddha-realm, as many as are there the munerous jewels, 
both in the heaven above and on the earth below, I brought all to my mind. 

4. There on a silvery ground, I built a palace, many storied, jewelled, 
raised high to the sly, 

5. Having ornamented pillars, well executed, well divided and arranged, 
costly, a mass of gold, decorated with arched gateways and canopies. 

6. The first storey was of lapis lazuli, shining like a bright piece of 
cloud; there were (the presentations of) lotuses and lilies® streAvn over in the 
excellent golden storey. 

7. Some (of the storeys) was of corals, some ha\dng coral-lustre, some 

shining red, while others resembling the Indagopaka-colour,^ illumined the 
quarters. , 

8. They had doors, portals and wondows Avell diAuded and arranged, four 
net-Avorks of vedikas ® and a delightful perfumed enclosure. 

9. And they were provided Avith the excellent peaked roofs — ^blue, 
yellow, red, white and bright black — and decorated wdth seven varieties of 
joAA’els. 

10. They had (devices of) lotuses of graceful looks, and were beautified 
by (the figures of) beasts and birds of prey, filled with (the presentations of) 
planets and stars, and adorned with (those of) the moon and sun.® 

11. They w^ere covered over Avith a golden netting joined Avith the golden 
tinkling bells, and the lovely golden garlands (on them) sounded musically by 
the force of the Avind. 

12. Festoons of baimers, raised on them, were made lovely by various 
colours — crimson, red, yellow and gold-coloured. 


'A Tljcy consist of tho Ion principal Arirtucs of Perfection (pSraml), such ns, Dana, SiUt, and 
tho rest, each in throo degrees of intensity, including the ton minor virtues (upapSramt), ond 
tho ten virtues in their ultimate senso (paramaUhaparamt): for details, see Carit/S‘Pi(aka((ha- •- 
katha, pp. 320r, ' 

® Lit. ‘(with) tho ten fingers’. 

® Lit. ’born in, or sprung from, water 

* Jndaoopal-a is ‘a sort of insect, obsor%'od to como out of tho groimd ofter rain*, cf. Pali- 
EnolM, Diet. (P.T.S.), a.v. 

* ‘”*9ings’, ‘balustrades of tho projecting windows’, seo Dialogues of the Buddha, 
vol. n, p. 210; MdhSvarpsa Transl., pp. 220, 286. 

« For similar representation, cf, Mahacaipaa, chop. XXX, w. 62-97. 


‘buddhakhetta’ in the APADXNA 


187 


13. Diverse, numerous, many hundreds were the slabs, made of silver, 
of jewels, of rubies, and also of emeralds. 

14. The palace was resplendent with various beds, and covered with 
soft Benares fabrics, rugs, silk made of the Dukula-fibre, China cloth,i fine 

V cloth, fi.brous garments,® whitish * garments, < and ell this manifold covering 
I spread out there in my mind. 

16. Adorned with jewelled peaked roofs in diflferent storeys (the palace) 
stood firm, bearing torches shining like gems. 

16. The wooden posts and pillars and the beautiful golden gates, made of 
gold brought from the Jambu river, of excellent {sara) wood, and also of silver, 
shone forth. 

17. Divided and arranged into many breaks® and resplendent with 
doors and cross-bars (the palace had) on both sides many full vases filled with 
red, white and blue lotuses.® 

18. All the Buddhas of the past, the leaders of the world, together with 
their Orders and disciples, I created in their natural beauty and appearance. 

19. Entering by that entrance, all the Buddhas together with their 
disciples — ^the circle of the elect — sat down on golden seats. 

20. Tho pre-eminent Buddhas that are now in the world, those of the 
past and present, I brought them all into the mansion. 

21. Mony hundreds of Paccekabuddhas, self-enlightened and invincible, 
f those of tho past and present, I brought them all into the mansion. 

22. Many wishing trees, divine and earthly, there were; I procured all 
' garments and covered (them each) with three robes. 

23. Filling the beautiful jewelled bowls, I offered (them) ready-made food, 
hard and soft, eatable and savoury, as well as drink and meal. 

24. Procuring divine garments, I provided them with robes of fine cloth; 
I entertained the whole circle of the elect with best food and (the four) sweet 
drinks of sugar, oil, honey and molasses. 

25. Entering the jewelled chamber, they, like lions lying down in caves, 
lay down in a lion’s posture ^ on costly beds. 

26. Mindful they rose and sat down cross-legged; they gave themselves 
up to delight in meditation on the way ® of all the Buddhas. 

27. Some preached the doctrines, some sported by their supernormal 
power, some who had gained mastery over and developed the higher psychic 


1 Cf. Buddhavarfisa, ohap. XXIV, v. 11. 

s Cf. PalrorpS in Kaufilit/a ArihaiSstra, ii, 11. 

s Cf. Pawtt^raka in ibid., ii, 11. * Cf. PatuvarahSlt i n «6»g. , ii, 11. ® Sandhi. 

* For a later dosoription otpSaSda, cf. Mahavatiisa, ohap. XXVII, w. 24-41 ; Th&pavarpaa, 
pp. 67f. 

’ i.e. on the right side. 

» Goeara, Lit., ‘pasture’, soorch after food; hero it evidently implies search for mental 
food. A suitahlo GoearagSma is, however, mentioned, os one of tho seven denderates for one 
intent on meditation, see Visuddhimagga, p. 127. 


18S 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


perception, applied themselves to it, while others numbering many hundred 
thousands worked transformations of themselves by their supernormal 
power. 

28. The Buddhas, too, questioned (other) Buddhas on points relating to 
omniscience, and comprehended by their knowledge matters, deep and subtle,'^' 

29. The disciples questioned the Buddhas, the Buddhas questioned the 
disciples; they questioned each other, to each other did they explain. 

30. The Buddhas, the Paccekabuddhas, the disciples and attendants, 
enjoying thus their delightful pursuits, rejoiced at the palace. 

31. ‘May they hold over head (each) an umbrella, embroidered mth gold 
and silver nets and gems, and fringed with nets of pearls I 

32. May there be awnings, resplendent with golden stars, variegated, and 
having flower-wreaths spread over (them); may they all hold them over head I 

33. Be (the palace) laid out with wreaths of flowers, fragrant with rows 
of perfumes, strewn over with festoons of garments, and bedecked with strings 
of jewels 1 

34. Be it strewn over with flowers, much variegated, incensed with sweet 
perfumes, marked with flve-finger marks of perfumes, and covered over wuth 
a golden covering. 

35. On four sides, be the tanks covered over with lotuses — ^red and white 
and blue ; be that these having lotus-pollens coming out, appear in golden hue I . 

36. All trees be blossomed around the palace, and let them drooping ' 
themselves sprinkle perfumed flowers over the mansion. 

37. Let the crested (peacocks) dance there, divine swans utter melodious 
sounds. Let the Karavilia birds,i too, sing out and the flocks of birds be on 
all sides . 

38. Let all drums be sounded, all lutes be played. Let all varieties of 
music go on around the palace. 

39. As far as the Buddha-realm, and above the horizons of the world, 
magnificent, lustrous, faultless and jewelled, 

40. Lot the golden divans be; let candlesticks ® be lighted, and the ten 
thousand (worlds) in succession be of one lustre. 

41. Let also courtesans, dancers and celestial nymphs dance, and various 
theatres bo staged around the palace. 

42. On tree-tops, mountain-tops, or on the summit of the Sineru 
moimtain,3 lot rac raise all manners of banners, variegated and five-coloured. 

43. Lot men, Nagas, Gandhabbas * and gods, all approach them paying 
liomago with joined hands, and surroimd the palace.’ 


1 Idcntincd vdtli Indian Cuckooes. 

- Lit.'Trccsoflninps’; bco Iiuddhavatii9a,J., A5i cf. algo' dtpa«stam&/ia of Indian archaeology, 
or “ branched candlestick” in tho Bible’, os noted by Dr. B. C. Law in bis translation of the 
Bvddhavamsa. 

* Skt. Sumeru. 

* Gandhabbas (Skt. Gandlmrvns), as n class, belong to tho demigods who inhabit tho 
Ciiununaburajiku realm. 


‘buddhakhbtta’ m the apadXna 


]89 


44. Whatever good deed done, ought to be done, or intended to be done 
by me, I did it well by body, speech and mind in (the abode of) the Thirty .1 

45. ‘The beings who are conscious or unconscious, let all share in the 
result of the meritorious deed done by me. 

46. To (them) whom the result of the meritorious deed done by me has 
been cffFered, it is (thus) made well Joiown. And to those who do not know of 
it, the gods should go and report. 

47. In the whole world, the beings that live but for the sake of food, 
let them obtain all manners of agreeable food by my heart’s -wash.* 

48. Mentally I offered the gift, mentally I brought the palace. I did 
homage to all tho supreme Buddhas, Paocekas and disciples of the conquerors. 

49. By that meritorious deed, null and resolve, I, abandoning the human 
body, went up to the Thirty-three. 

60. I have come to Imow (only) of the two existences, divine and human; 
no other destiny have I experienced — ^this is the fulfilment of my mental wish. 

61. I have been superior to the gods, I have become the lord of men. 
Endowed with beauty and appearance, I am incomparable in the world in 
respect of wisdom. 

52. Food of various kinds and best, jewels not inadequate, and garments 
of all fashions come to me quickly from above (lit. the sky). 

63. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever 
I stretch forth my hand, divine eatables come to me. 

64. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever I 
stretch forth my hand, all varieties of jewels come to me. 

56. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever 
I stretch forth my hand, all kinds of perfumes come to me. 

66. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever I 
stretch forth my hand, all Idnds of vehicles come to me. 

67. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever I 
stretch forth my hand, all kinds of garlands come to me. 

68. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever 
I stretch forth my hand, (all manners of) decorations come to me. 

69. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever 
I stretch forth my hand, maidens of all descriptions come to me. 

60. On earth as well as mountain, in the air, water and wood, wherever I 
stretch forth my hand, come (to me) honey and sugar. 

61. On earth as well as moimtain, in the air, water and wood, wherever 
I stretch forth my hand, all varieties of solid food come to me. 

^ 62. To the poor and needy, to the professional and street-beggars, what- 

ever excellent gift I made, (it was) for the attainment of the Enlightenment 
par excellence. 

63. While moxmtains and rocks roar, dense forests thunder, this 

world and heaven joyous, I have become a Buddha m the world. 

1 It is the round figure for thirty-throe, end is used os equivalent to tho Tavatiipsa heaven; 
cf. Petavallhu, iii, 1 ; VimSnavatihu, 18. 30. 



JOO 


B. C. LAW VOLtJME 


64. In this world, tenfold is the direction of wliich there is no end, 
nnd in that direction are the innumerable Buddha-realms, 

05. My halo is described as shooting forth rays in pairs ; let tlie blaze of 
rays between them be of great effulgence. 

66. In such world-sj^stem, let all persons see me, let all be jojfful. and^- 

let all follow me. ‘ i 

67. Let the drum of immortality be beaten with reverberating sweet- 
sound ; in tho midst of it let all persons hear my sweet voice. 

68. While the cloud of righteousness showers, let all be free from the 
defilements ; let the lowest of beings be (at least) the Stream-winners. 

69. Giving away the gift worthy to be given, I ftdfiUed the precepts 
entirely, reached perfection in the matter of renunciation, and obtained the 
Enlightenment par excellence. 

70. Questioning the wise, I put forth the best energy, reached perfection 
in tho matter of forbearance, and obtained the Enlightenment par excellence. 

7 1 . Intent on truth, I fulfilled the perfection of truth ; reaching perfection 
in friendliness, I obtained the Enlightenment par excellence. 

72. In gain and loss, in happiness and sorrow, in respect and disrespect, 
being unportinbed under all vicissitudes, I obtained the Enlightenment par 
excellence. 

73. Viewing idleness from fear, and energy from i>eace, be energetic — 

this is the command of the Buddhas. ' ' 

74. Viewing dissention from fear, and amity from peace, be united and 
kindly in speech — ^this is the command of the Buddhas. 

76. Viewing indolence from fear, and diligence from peace, cultivate the 
eightfold path — ^this is the command of the Buddhas. 

76. Assembled (here) are many Buddhas and Arahants from all quarters ; 
to the supreme Buddhas and Arahants pay homage and bow down. 

77. Thus are the Buddhas incomprehensible, and incomprehensible are 
the qualities of the Buddhas and incomprehensible is the reward of those 
who have faith in the incomprehensible.^ 

Thus the Blessed One, while developing his oum. Buddlia-life, related tho 
religious discomse, called tho Tradition of the previous excellent deeds of the 
Buddhos.2 


* Cf. ilahSvathaa, chap. XVII, v. SO; chap. XXXI , v. 126. 

* Buddhdpadana means tho pre\'ious deeds of tho Buddhas, their difficult tasks of tho post, 
nnd tho Bitddh&padaniya is so called bocauso (tho tradition of) these excellent deeds or services 
is handed doxm and preached by tho Buddhas. 

'Bxtddhdpadaniyam namd ti BuddhSnani purSlanalcammant, porapatp dukkarakiriyatp'^ 
adhikiecappavatlattd desitatta Buddhdpadaniyati ti cvannamahayi.' — Cariya-PifakafthahathS, 
p. 335. 


KALIDASA’S KUNTALE^VARA DAUTYA 


By 

Db. V. Raghavan, M.A., Ph.D. 

We find in Bhoja’s S.K.A.,^ II, p. 168, a verse "with the following comments 
given as an illustration for a second variety of the Sabdalamkara called 
Pathiti, in which a ‘verse gives another meaning by the mere change of a main 
word, or the case (Vibhakti) only. 

cTSf iratJsrat ( w— 

^RPSIT 


^ ^ TI33^ 

I— S.K.A., p. 168 . 




According to tliis comment by Bhoja himself, some speaker pleads to some- 
body on behalf of the King of the Kuntalas; and the person addressed gives 
the same verse as reply, changing ‘Tvayi’ into ‘Mayi’ thereby permitting 
the request asked for. 

This verse occurs in a similar context in Bhoja’s ^r. Pra.^ where Bhoja 
gives it ‘while illustrating Uha naiyayiki vyapeksS, i.e. simply Uha. For- 
tunately, Bhoja gives in the 6r. Pra. some more detafis about the speaker 
and the person addressed by him : 





I 




ftqfir fsnrrart 

— 6r. Pra., Vol. n, Ch. VIII, p. 79.. 


The 6r. Pra. is a later work of Bhoja, written -with greater care, pains and 
knowledge of other works. It is therefore likely that Bhoja corrects himself 


^ S.K.A. Sarosvatlkantbabharana of Bboja: Savyaxnala edn. 

* 8i- Prft- ^rfigaro Prakafia of Bboja: MS. in the Madras Govt. Ori. MSS. Library. 



192 


B. C. LAW volume 


in the Sr. Pra. Perhaps, while he was quoting the verse and commenting 
on it in his S.K.A., he was quoting the verse from hearsay. We are not sure 
whether even in the Pra. Bhoja is quoting from the work itself directly, 
for we know In'Tu already as having borrowed considerably from BajaSekhara; 
and BajaSekhara it is who is our first writer to quote this verse , 

etc. Bajasekhara gives it to illustrate the ‘Harana’ of a part of a Pada, 
reproducing another’s verse itself with only the change of just a part of the 
word. 





W— 


viTf^cfT^ ^STW 






— ^vyamimatnsa, Gaekwad edn., pp. 60-61. 

Here fq q fa changed into fqqg is change; and into uf^ is a ^ 

change only of the the locative being in tact. Thus this is a case of j 

In the three texts from which we have above quoted, the S.B.&. and 
the Sr. Pra. of Bhoja, and the Blavyamimamsa of RajaSekhara, we have 
variations in most vital words. S.K.A. reads the 6r. Pra. on the 

other hand substitutes fqqfg and corresponding to it, we have the intro- 
ductory remark of Bhoja, 

m the question must bring forth the answer of and can he 

justified only when we know more about the contents of this Kavya and the 
mission on which Kalidasa went. The 6r. Pra. further makes Vikramaditya’s 
reply Tifq which can be understood only with a questioning Kaku. 

The Kavyamimamsa reads the speech of Kalidasa like the 6r. Pra. 

and the reply of Vikramaditya like the S.K.A. ^rfq. In the 
face of such variation, we are not able to decide which is correct. 

If S.K.A.’s readings are correct, the King of the Krmtalas was inferior 
and subordinate to Vikramaditya, who perhaps sent his poet Kalidasa to the 
Kuntalas and see how he was conducting himself. Kalidasa perhaps smoothens 
the strained relations and pleads with Vikrama on Kuntala’s behalf to allow 
him to enjoy himself. This Vikrama consents to. If 6r. Pra. is correct, 
Kalidasa must be understood to reveal to Vikrama that Kuntala is carefi*ee 
and is merry with his wives, at which Vikrama is either glad or is surprised. 
No clue to this personal relationship between the two kings is found here. 
The verse may jdeld the inference that very friendly relations existed between 


ksmdssa’s kxtntale^vaba DAtriryA 


193 


the paramount power of Vilcrama and the subordinate Kuntala; ’K’w.lida.Rn. 
was at the latter’s court for no great purpose, except to be his court-poet for 
some time. On his return Vikrama asks about Kimtala generally and' the 
poet eulogizes the Sling by this verse, in which Vikrama’s valour is extolled. 
Viltrama is so powerful and protects the kingdoms of his vassals also, that the 
vassals, shifting the burden of protection to the sovereign, give themselves 
up to pleasure. In the Slavyamimanisa, the reading ftrsfg 3?^ in Vikrama’s 
reply may mean ‘01 let him be enjo 3 ring’. To make any definite statement, 
we must have a surer textual authority, and not ^uch a text which varies in 
each quotation of it. The only facts that we gather from the quotation in the 
^Ir. Pra. are that poet Kalidasa came from Kuntala to Viljramaditya and that 
the former was a smaller power. We caimot even infer from this that it was 
Vikrama who was the first patron of Kalidasa or that he sent Kalidasa on an 
embassy to Kmitala, and that this verse was spoken by Kalidasa on his return 
to Vilcrama’s court. When we stand perplexed in this manner, Ksemendra 
promises to give us some help to clarify the matter a little more. In his 
Auoityavicaracarca he seems to tell us that poet Kalidasa wrote a poem 
called KuntaleSvaradautya, ‘Embassy to the king of Kuntala’, that he was the 
court-poet of Vikramadltya, the suzerain power, that he went as an ambassador 
to the court of a subordiimte power, viz. that of the King of Kuntala, that 
he was not at once properly honoured, that he preferred to squat on the 
ground, and when, perhaps, asked to rise up and take a seat, he gave out a 
magnanimous verse that one should value sitting on Mother Earth more than 
on any other seat. 

XV f^fVcWTlT! VTOS 3311 1 

1 — Kavyamala Gucchaka, I, pp. 139-140. 

Firstly, one may be tempted to doubt that Kalidasa is simply a character 
in a piece called Kunteivaradautya, he is the speaker of this verse as^i^nXlV, 
character in the story, and that he is not the poet-author of the Kimteivara- 
dautya. But it must be borne in mind that Ksemendra is citing the names 
of poets and criticizing or complementing them and therefore it is not possible 
to Twn-lrft Kalidasa only a character in the theme. Secondly, it may be urged 
that it is not clear that Krmteivaradautya is a poem written by Kalidasa; 
Tr5.li<ln.gB. perhaps did go on an embassy from Vikrama to Kuntala, but he 
might not ha;ve recorded his embassy in a poem also afterwards; his embassy 
*3 . . 



194 


B. C. LAW VOI/TJMB 


T 7 as part of the facts people kaew of the poet’s life and he spoke a few verses 
in Knntala’s court and again at Vikrama’s; all that remains of this embassy 
is some verses, some Muktakas relating to this embassy, current in tradition. 
Two of these verses are Kgemendra’s etc. and etc. of Eaja- 

^ekhara and Bhoja; it is not also improbable that one of the two othef 
Kalidasas mentioned by Eaja^ekhaxai is meant here but he is however not 
the real author; the real author might be some later poet .who wove out this 
political Dutakavya with the romantic figure of Kalidasa as the centre and 
fathered it on Kalidasa himself, and this embassy of Kalidasa is only as much 
fhct as things said of him in Ballala’s Bhojaprabandha. 

If this Kimtelvara- or Kuntale^vara-dautya is taken as a genuine work, 
a Kavya of the great Kalidasa himself, how are the consequences issuing 
from it to be fitted in the two prominent views on the date of Kalidasa 1 Those 
who assig n Kalidasa to the first century B.C. and hold him as the court-poet 
of Vilcramaditya of Ujjain who inaugurated the Vikrama Era in 67 B.C. will 
have to hold that it is this Vikramaditya who figures in the KunteSvara- 
dautya. The Kimtalade^a was then ruled by the Satavahanas, with their 
capital at Pratisthana, and the Kimtalesvara figuring in the Kuntesvaradautya 
is some Satavahana of Pratisthana.^ What kind of relations between the two 
caused a Dautya between them by such a personality as poet Kalidasa, - it is 
not possible to know now. 

Those who take Kalidasa as a court-poet of Candragupta II Vikramaditya 
easily explain things. They harness these two quotations from Kalidasa’s 
Kuntesvaradautya for proving this theory of theirs of Kalidasa’s date. 

In an article in the A.B.O.B.I., Vol. XII, p. 458, Rev. H. Heras interprets 
these quotations in the Sr. Pra. and the Aucityavicaracarca. He says that 
the Kuntala King referred to in Kalidasa’s. KuntaleSvaradautya is the 
Kadamba King Bhagiratha. Candragupta II Vikramaditya sent Kalidasa 
on an embassy to Bhagiratha to arrange for a marriage alliance between the 
two powers. The suggestion of marriage as the purpose of the embassy is 
said to gain strength by the fact that' Candragupta 11 arranged for a diplomatic 
marriage with the family of the Vakatakas.* 

R. M. Moreas states Heras’ conclusion more elaborately in Chapter iii 
of his book on the Eladambakula (pp. 19-22). He says: ‘Indeed it will 
not be far from the truth, if. we suggest that the historic embassy of 
Candragupta' II Vikramaditya to the Kuntala King mentioned in the §r. 




® Without any new evidence, we cannot say anything on the identity of these kings. Brom 
recent contributions on the Satavahanas, it appears that the same Satavahanas were ruling at 
two headquarters, TIjjaia and Prat^hSna, that 'Vikramaditya of "Ujiain'is also a Satavahana 
and that the Satavahana or ^alivahana of the Southern Kingdom who foimded the Salivahana 
^aka Era in 78 A.!), was also 'Vikramaditya. Confusion is thus increased by this fact regarding 
the two personalities, 'Vikramaditya and Satavahana. 

® Heras wrongly gives the Aucityavicaracarca as the work of Hemacondra. K?emendra 
is its author and Hemacandra is the author of the ElavyanuSasana. Moreas repeats Heras’ 
error. 


Kalidasa’s ktotale^vaea dautya 


195 


Pra., by poet Bhoja, probably took place in the reign of this Icing.’ The TCing 
referred to is ICadamba Bhagiratha (380-420 A.D.). Eladamba kin gg were 
exclusive owners of the title of Kuntaleivara. Moreas farther suggests: 
Candragupta II was at this time dreading invasion from Hunas and was 
^fsnaking marriage alliances with powerful longs in the south. One such marriage 
alliance seems to be an offer of a princess of the Gupta court to Kadamba 
Bha^atha. Kalidasa was entrusted with the delicate task of negotiating 
this marriage. The Kuntesvaradautya is a result of this embassy. Bhagi- 
ratha’s pow'er w^as then in the ascendent and so he did not offer a seat to the 
ambassador from the Gupta court. 

Dr. S. Krishnaswamy Ayyangar has discussed and drawm his owm conclu- 
sions from this Kuntesvaradautya in his two articles on the Vakatakas in the 
A.B.O.B.I., Vol. V, pp. 31-54 and in the Journal of the Mythic Society, 
XV, pp. 160-162.1 

Dr. S. Krislmaswamy Ayyangar identifies the Kimtale^a to whom Kalidasa 
goes on embassy, according to this Kavya called KuntaleSvara-dautya, as 
Vakataka Pravarasena 11, author of the Setubandha, contemporary and 
grandson of Candragupta II Vikramaditya. The fourth Vakataka king named 
Rudrasena 11 married Prabhavatigupta, daughter of Deva(Candra)gupta 
and Kuberanaga. Their son is Pravarasena II. Prabhavatigupta was regent 
for her young son for some time and Pravarasena came to rule himself even 
in his maternal grandfather’s reign. 

This Vakateka Pravarasena 11, contemporary and grandson of Candra- 
gupta n Vikramaditya, is the author of the Prakrt poem Setubandha. 

, According to the commentary called Ramasetu on the Setubandha, ELSlidasa 
revised this poem. Bamadasa, author of the Bamasetu, says also that 
Pravarasena was in Vikramaditya’s (Candragupta ’s) court. 

Dr, S. Krishnaswamy Ayyangar quotes the eiidence of the verse 

etc. from the ,Kavyamimamsa , the S.K.A., and the 6r. Pra. and 
holds the embassy of Kalidasa from Vikramaditya as one to this Pravarasena II. 
He justifies the name KuntaleSa for the Vakatekas wdth the argument that 
the early Vakataka King Prithvisena I claims to have conquered the Kimtalas 
and that probably the Kuntalas were stiU tmder the Vakatakas. He cites 
the authority of a poem called Bharata-carita (canto I) which refers to the 
Setubandha as written by Kuntalesa.^ 


1 In both the articles. Dr. S. K. Ayyangar wrongly says that the verse 
is quoted by K^emendra in his AucityavicSracarca. 

In the latter article he says that ho is informed by Sir. A. Rangaswamy Saraswati that the . 
Sf. Pra. refers to the stanza of a work of a royal poet Devagupta by name, and is given as a 
colloquy between this royal personage and Kalidasa. Bhoja mentions no author named 
Devagupta, either while quoting the colloquy referred to or elsewhere. 

See also J.O,R., Vol. I, p. 89. 

s On p. 45 of his article in the A.B.OM.I., Dr. Krisihnaswamy Ayyangar interprets the verso 
wrongly. He says: ‘Vikramaditya construed the with > 

and charged (Kalidasa) with maldng a report of an ambiguous unport.’ According to Raja- 
fiekhara, the change of fqqffl into fqqg oiid into alters^ the sense completely and 


196 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


In the article in the Journal of the Mythic Society, Dr. S. Krishnaswamy 
Ayyangar argues that the Vakatakas wore Bhojas. Y. R. Gupto points out 
{Journal of Indian History, Vol. V) that the Vakatakas were tlio old Bhojas, 
Vidarbhas and Krathakau^ikas. Kalidasa is traditionally represented as 
having been patronized by Bhoja ; and taking this Bhoja as the King of Dhara' 
of the eleventh century, scholars laugh at the tradition. The Bhoja who 
patronized Kalidasa is Vakataka Pravarasena II, author of the Setubandha, 
in the production of which work Kalidasa collaborated (pp. 401-407). 

Mr - A. Rangaswamy Sarasvati has something to say on the Kunte^vara- 
dautya in a note on it in tho. Journal of the Mythic Society, XV, pp. 168-9. 
On p. 271, Rangaswamy Sarasvati suggests that KunteSvaradautya is a 
drama and he calls it twice a historical drama on p. 272 1 According to him, 
the KuntaleSa in tho Kunte4varadautya was a favourite feudatory of 
Viliramaditya; ho offered Kalidasa a scat but tho poet preferred to squat on 
the floor. Ho adds: Ramagiri (Ramatcka in the Central Provinces) was a 
temporary capital of tho Vakatakas as can bo gathered from a grant which 
PrabhAvatigupta made for tho feet of tho Lord of Ramagiri. It is during 
Pravarasona’s sojourn at Ramagiri that Kalidasa, w'ho accompanied his patron, 
wrote his lyric Megiasande^a, which mentions Ramagiryairama as the 
temporary abode of tho forlorn' Yaksa. It was Kalidasa liimsolf separated 
from his own wife that sent that cloud messenger. 

The suggestions of Heras and Moreas cannot meet with much favour. 
The verse quoted by RajaSokhara and Bhoja, etc., 

prohibits any suggestion of the purpose of tho embassy being a marriage 
negotiation. Had Kalidasa been sent to arrange for the marriage of a Gupta 
princess with Bhagiratha, the question of Vilo'amaditya on the return of the 
poet would not have been ^ ? and Kalidasa’s reply would 

have been different and certainly not that the Kuntala was enjoying himself 
happily with his harem. , 

More definite ideas can be made out of Ksomendra’s quotation and com- 
ments on the verse etc. Firstly, Ksemondra tells us that its 

author is Kalidasa and tho work is called Kuntedvara (KtmtaleSvara) dautya. 
As already pointed out, it is not improbable that Kunteiivaradautya does 
not mean exactly a poetic composition but refers to tho incident in Kalidasa’s 
life and career, viz. the embassy he went on from Vilcramaditya to Kuntaleia; 
and there might have been handed down in tradition a few stray verses 
(Muktakas) which Kalidasa spoke at both the courts as the ambassador. 
Ksemendra’s comments clearly say: — 

(i) Kalidasa .was the Duta of a suzerain power — 

(ii) Tho poet went as Duta to a vassal’s court — 


that -was pTesumably what was suggested os an emendation by Vikramaditya. The import is 
not ambiguous, and VikromSditya did not emend or venture to suggest an improvement upon 
Kalid&sa. Tho ve^se is cited by Bhoja as a case of Oha and of Harana by BajaSekhara ond their 
import has already been explained. 


OBIYA LITEBATTOE IN THE EASLY STAGES 


197 


(iii) He however did not receive the seat of honour due to him as a 

representative of the Maharaja— 

(iv) Kalidasa co\ild not resent, for he had come for the achievement of 

sometlung with the favour of the Kuntala King. The purpose 
of the embassy depended on a favourable reply from the KnTit.n.la 
King. This is clearly borne out by the words 

So, Kalidasa chose to sit on the ground and 
perhaps when Kuntala realized his discourtesy and asked bin^ 
to rise up and take a seat, Kalidasa spoke this verse, with 
all his magnanimity — . 

We want further evidences and fresh discoveries on the subject to say 
anything more of the Kunte^varadautya of Kalidasa 


ORIYA LITERATURE IN’ THE EARLY STAGES 

By 

kfE. Pbivaeanjan Sen, ^I.A., P.R.S. 

The vernacular literatures of India have not yet come into their own. 
The}' have not yet succeeded in attracting that attention which should in the 
normal course bo paid to them. The shadow of the classical language which 
at one time hung over Europe still casts its gloom over the villages of India 
and persists in maintaining its prestige oven in the ‘enlightened’ twentieth 
century, though English is now undoubtedly the language of culture, fashion 
and advancement. Tlie claim.s of the Bengali literature have been sufficiently 
vindicated by Dr. Dinesh Chandro Sen who, though he might not have been 
its first historian, had at least been the first to dedicate his life to its service. 
His days have been a well-filled record of researches and studies in the litera- 
ture of his province; to him belonged the credit of popularizing its knowledge 
and proclaiming its glories. The other provinces of India have not been 
equally fortimato and we are still more or less in the darkness of ignorance as 
to the nature and achievement of the literatmres of our neighbours — the Oriyas 
and the Assamese. Recent times have witnessed the publication of useful 
manuals of Hindi literature. 

The present attempt has been designed to narrate the story of Oriya 
literature,- displaying various links in the chain of its early history and men- - 
tioning only those works which have been able to secure a foothold in the 
shifting sands of time. It cannot certainly pretend to be the first study on 
the subject. Dr. Rajendra Lala Mitra, Hunter, Stirling and Beames have all 
made memorable contributions and as early as 1897, klanomohan Ohakravarti 
did some considerable and valuable spade-work on this as well as other 


1 This fonuB pnrt of the •writer’s Ph.D. thesis ‘Bhoja’s Spagaia Piaka£a’. 


198 


B. C. TiAW VOBTJME 


important topics of inddogical interest, through his articles on Oriya language 
and Kterature published in. the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. 
Tarini Charan Ratha published a primer in Oriya in 1914 which contained a bare 
sketch of an outline of history. Wlien Sir Asutosh Mookerjee organized the 
study of Indian Vernaculars under the Post-Graduate Department, in pursuance' 
of bis favourite scheme, Prof. B. C. Majumdar edited Typical Selections from 
Oriya Literature with an introduction in which he' gave us something like a 
historical review of the literature itself; in recent times. Pandit Binayak 
Misra, busy with the study of Orissan inscriptions, has still foimd time to write 
handbooks on the language and literature of the province in his own verna- 
cular. What still remains to be done is to gather the different strands and 
to settle them together so as to see them in the true perspective from the view- 
point of literary development, and the present is only the beginning of an 
attempt in that direction. 

According to the 1931 census, the Oriya language was spoken by 8,535,805 
souls in the province of Bihar and Orissa only. The boundaries of Orissa have 
since been widened and an attempt has been made to unite all Oriya-speaking 
people under the same province on the ground of linguistic homogeneity. The 
' approximate area of the new province of Orissa is 33,000 square miles, with 
a population of 8,277,000 souls. 

The language and literature of so large a number of our countrymen will 
furnish us with some means of Imowing Indian culture in one of its provincial 
varieties, and thus form an important branch of study. The importnace of 
this will come home to us when we remember that the percentage of literacy in 
Orissa compares very favourably with its neighbouring provinces. Moreover 
waves after waves of foreign invasion have burst in, but the integrity of national 
life and culture has been comparatively unaffected and there has been a con- 
tinuity of literary activities Avhioh we propose to present here historically. 

Orissa boasts of a hoary antiquity, the country is full of relics of the 
past, plentifolly displaying the long distance of time to which it reaches back. 
There is no mention of it in Vedic literature, but it is specifically mentioned in 
the Mahahharata ^ as a forest country on both sides of the Vaitarapi, with its 
capital at Rajapuri. Its mention in the Arthaiastra of Kautilya in coimection 
with the manufacture of a special variety of cotton fabric is remarkable. 
Kalifiga becomes prominent again in the history of India with its king 
Kharavela who drove away the Yavanas then in possession of Muttra. An 
integral part of the Gupta Empire, it stood out as a centre of influence, both 
Jain and Buddhist. After an interval o£ disorder and confusion of political 
power it again emerges into prominence with a new line of kings, the Eastern 
Gangas.2 Orissa in the eleventh century was called South ELoi^ala, and it 
was co-extensive with the area covered by the Tributary States of Orissa.® 
Kalingabda wa s counted from 271 ^akabda or 349-60 A.D.^ 

,, 1 Bk. xn. Chap. 4. 2 Orissa by Prof. S. K. Aiyangar, J.B.O.R.S., Vol. -pni, Pt. I. 

3 See InBoription of Bajendra Chois I. 

‘ ‘Early Ganga Kings', G. BaiMdas, B.A., Vol. IX, Pt. III-IV, p. 416. 



OBIYA LITEBATUEE IN THE EABLY STAGES 199 

This antiquity of Orissa’s history makes it natural that it should boast of 
the Sanskrit culture, and modem historians have spoken of ‘the Sanskrit 
• literature of Orissa But there is an occasional tendency to ignore the 
influence of Sanskrit on modem Indian literature, and this tendency is seen 
]^eyen among the present-day -writers on Oriya literature. The native element 
is undoubtedly -worthy of being -treated -with greater emphasis, but, -with due 
deference to the opinions of enthusiasts, it may be submitted that to admit the 
influence of Sanskrit is not to ignore the genius of the vernacular. Indeed 
when we review the literary output, we have to acknowledge that as a model, 
both in form and substance, Sanskrit li-terature has exerted an extensive 
influence on the pro-vincial. In the case of Bengali literature we find that 
Sanskrit is a dominant note, but native genius works upon it in ways peculiar 
to itself; treatises more or less free of the classical stamp are being daily dis- 
covered by our literary explorers. The M3miensingh Ballads, due to the 
indefatigable exertions of Dr. Dinesh Chandra Sen, have pointed to a tradition 
worth investigating by all interested in the history of Indian literature. 

Similarly, Sanslcrit seems to have an rmquestioned influence on Oriya, but 
creative artists in all cotmtries and in all ages give out more than they get, 
and in most of the men of letters we find unmistakable signs of Sanskritic 
influence. The word influence should be understood in its proper implication ; 
sometimes it may merely help an inherent tendency to develop in a given 
direction, and in that sense it is to be imderstood in this context. More than 
any other place, Puri had been aU along a centre of Sanskrit learning; the 
different religious sects of the Hindus had kept up there a discussion of the 
holy scriptures; tiie old culture had also been carefully preserved in the 
motmtain stronghold of the chiefs of Orissa, and there the old atmosphere still 
holds in its integrity, however much the plains may be obli-rious of their - 
ancient tradition. The achievement of Orissa in point of astronomy, rhetoric, 
logic and law — according to the old tradition — has not been meagre; and if the 
Sanskritic tradition is there stiU a living force, it follows that the development 
of literature cannot have been altogether independent of such a tradition. 
There may be differences of opinion -with regard to its degree or extent, but 
that is another matter and worth detailed investigation, it need not cloud the 
main issue. 

Compilations in Sanskrit, as might be naturally expected, preceded those 
in Oriya, and beside stone and copper-plate inscriptions we get a niunber of 
Paura^uc and Smrtic works -written in Sanskrit — ^works like Ekamra-purdm, 
Kapila-samhitd, Virajd-mdhdtmya, etc., which were none earlier than the 
thirteenth century A.D. In addition, Baghimandan speaks of the Orissa 
school of Smrtikaras whose rise corresponded -with the phenomenal rise of 
Vijayanagar in the South where Sayanacarya and Madhavacarya found time, 
in spite of arduous duties pertaining to their high position in the State, to 
be actively interested in their pursuit of'Vedic and classical studies. The 


1 Mwaomohan Chakravaiti, J.A.S.B., 6. 



200 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME , 


correspondence might indicate -a causal connection as well. Baghunandan 
refers to the Vidyakarapaddhati again and again.^ Along with these schools of 
Purana’and Smrti culture, we may mention' the school of rhetoricians, who may 
be said to have formed, like the Kashmirians, a distinct branch, consisting of 
Vidyadhara, the author oiEkdvall', Vidyanatha, the author of Pratdparudriya 
Taio-bimsan’, Jagannatha Panditaraja, author of another remarkable work 
on Sanskrit rhetoric. Nor must we forget the great scholar Vi^vanatha 
E^viraj who ‘ sported "with eighteen courtesans of languages ’ and whose codified . 
work on Sanskrit rhetoric, the Sdhityadarpan, commends itself as the standard 
book on the subject. Visvanatha Kaviraj is described by tradition as having' 
lived in a -vTlIage Bir Narasinghapur or Bir Harelnrishnapur, near Athdranald 
puskarinl. ' In the same -village was bom the great smarta Gadadhar Rajguru 
who followed Raghunandan after a few years, and who was the author of a code . 
‘Gadadhar Paddhati*. In his ancestral line, five or six generations back, was 
Bishi Pat-yosiii, and of this Bishi and Chanda Rayguru, Chanda being a 
corrupt or abbreviated form of Chandrachuda, many stories are current with 
reference to their powers of sddhand. Bishi and Chanda were expert in as 
many as eighteen branches of learning — ^the number perhaps signifying a 
fairly reasonable command over general Imowledge. Tradition has it that a 
musical instrument like a drum was kept before temples, as many strokes to 
be given to it by a scholar as the branches of learning he was proficient in ; . 
Bishi and Chanda, it is said, both gave eighteen strokes each. Basudev 
Ratha, a co-villager of Gadadhar, compiled Kdlaprakdia, Bhdvaprakdia, 
Aedraprakdia, etc., corresponding to Kalasdr, Ddnasdr, Aedrasdr, etc. The 
treatises by Gadadhar have been published by the Royal Asiatic Society of 
Bengal and they are current in Madras and Midnapur. We may also point 
out the fact that Orissa claimed among its other illustrious sons a saint named 
Damodara Svami, to whom a math had been dedicated and which is still ia 
existence ; and who was the guru of Madhusudana Tirthasvami. I paid a "visit 
to this village, three or four miles in length, with two Siva temples, dedicated 
to Balunkesh and Lokanatha, at its two ends, each "with a tank adjoining. 

It is distinctly to be understood that Sanskrit has even now divided the , 
creative writer’s attention as a medium in which to clothe the graces, etc. of 
his imagination, and writing in it, though gradually discountenanced by the 
study and culture of Oriya, has not yet gone quite out of fashion. MM. 
Haraprasad Sastri, an eminent scholar and a remarkably skilful searcher of 
manuscripts, calculated in 1916 that there were more than two lakbs of palm- 
leaf manuscripts in Sanskrit in Puri district alone; enquiries made by the 
Commissioner of Orissa at the instance of His Excellency Sir Edward Gait, ■ 
himself an enthusiastic patron of letters, confirmed the estimate. Even 
chie& contemporaneous with 6ri Caitanya composed and compiled in Sanskrit, 
and the Sarasvatl-vilds, not yet in print, is an instance in point. A Pan^t 
was appointed by the Bihar and Orissa Research Society for instituting searches 


^ Manomohan Chakravarti, 6. 



OBIYA LIXBBATTJBB IN THE BABLY STAGES 


201 


for Sanskrit manuscripts, and the following were among the new finds: 
(1) OaHgavainSanv.caritam, a metrical history of the Gahga dynasty, composed 
in 1441 A.D.;'(2) Sanskrit commentaries on the Sdhityadarpan; (3) a new 
commentary on the Rdmayaim, etc.i 

The language of the province has developed in spite of the prevalence of 
Sanskrit, but what had been the earliest specimen of Oriya has been debated. 
Ever since the discovery of the Garydpadaa by late MM. Haraprasad Sastri, 

• the literary world had been accustomed to consider them as evidently Bengali; 
there had been occasional differences as to whether they fell, strictly speaking, 
within the range of Bengali literature or whether they belonged to the Prakrt 
just before the branching off into the provincial vernaculars took place. The 
issue was raised whether they were Oriya and in the Utkal Sahitya (Magh, 
1333) the matter was broached and the conclusion reached that they rightly 
belonged to Oriya literature. The arguments, for aU they are worth, may well 
be examined here. 

The words in the original: 

Aji Bhusu Bangdll bhaili 
nija ghardm can^dll Mi 

have been taken to mean: ‘Bhusu has become a Bengali, because he has taken 
to wife a Oandal woman’, taking Bengali in a disparaging sense, with reference 
to the non-Aryans who then lived in Bengal. The author of the argument 
•unfortunately misses the point that ‘Bahgali’ means here one of the four 
systems of sddhand, and has no reference to race. The sense pertains not to 
anthropology in the 'narrower sense of the term but to a certain religious 
practice. 

To the argument advanced by MM. Sastri that many words occurring in 
these padas were used in old Bengali, the writer of the article under reference 
replies that they were and are still used daily in Oriya, and many other words 
current in old Bengali are still used in imchanged or slightly changed forms- 
in Orissa. This overlooks the fact that many words now obsolete for literature 
are in currency in ■villages and other places away from the centres of modem 
culture. The people, for example, of Bankura use certain words which are 
obsolete and meaningless to the people of East Bengal, but some of these 
words are preserved in old Bengali. In other words, philological tests have to 
be applied with caution to the various dialects in use. We may also remember 
that many words, now peculiar to Bengali, once were regarded as common to 
both Bengali and Oriya. 

It has been further contended that many words used in the padas cannot 
be claimed to be of Bengali speech, and words like bulathm, sankdidu, ubMld- 
bdhudai have been cited as instances. But any one, having the least acquain- 
tance "with books Kke Krttivdsl Bdmdyana, ■vvtII at once identify the last two 
as Bengali forms : 


1 J.B.O.R.S., Vol. V. 


202 


B. 0, LAW VOLtfME 


bhikkha magi bule glum-R gJiare 

— KavikaHkalf' caridi. 

e.g., bahvdin liaila purMh balvu^i im aih, 

•R'giiTrg.Tw Daaa’s MaMbliarata, Adiparva. 

hrsta haid bahudila daridra braJirmna 

—Ibid. 

deie bahudiyd yena najdi blidrat 

. — ^Krttivasa, Rdmdyam,. 

dhdiyd dllaiya keka dkanu bahu^i 

— Jnanadas. 

Another line in the padas has been taken to be a strong proof of the 
caryds being Oriya in language: 

^Martihule bahid ofiydne sdngaq^ 

explainmi^ it aa ‘earry -iewela and meet the Oriya woman*, but the mention 
of the term by itself is hardly any proof at aU of the language being Oriya. 
The correct form is manikide bahid oriydne samdi ‘ enters oriyana having 
passed by manikula ’ — manilnila and oriyana being technical names of 
stations (or oakras) within the body according to Yogic tradition. 

The photos of the script as reproduced in Sastri’s edition, it has been 
asserted, show on inspection that the Magadhi character was changed into the 
round alphabet of Oriya; the script is thus Oriya. It is, however, difficult to 
see how a theory like this can rest on such a weak basis. This is too much of a 
fragmentary application of palaeontology to demand attention. 

MM. Sastri had made a statement that ‘he found while collecting the songs 
in Nepal, a fragment composed in Oriya ’ ; this bas led to the inference that the 
flow of thought and emotion as represented m literature ran from Orissa to 
Nepal. The truth seems to be that in Nepal was to be found the common 
stock-in-trade of the Buddhists and the Sabajiyas, and that this common 
stock was freely used by different dialects. The learned discoverer of the 
padas was certainly free from the bias of patriotism, otherwise he would not 
have emphasized that there was a solitary fragment composed in Oriya. 

One of the songs ends with the colophon ‘Krishnacharj^a who comes from 
Orissa’; but as he is described elsewhere as a Bhdratabdsl or Indian, Sastri is 
unwilling to call liim an Oriya and has been made the object of a meaningless 
jest that in this Sastri must have been under the idea that Orissa was outside 
India. • That men used to move about freely from province to province seems 
to have been difficult of comprehension even to scholars with eyes for research. 
As a matter of fact, there has not yet been any unanimity about 
Krishnacharyya’s coimtry of origin. TaraJiatha holds him as a native of 
Vidyanagara in the country of Karna, presumably in Orissa, but his Tibetan 
biographers link him up with Somapuri which is believed to have been in 
East Bengal.i There is, moreover, the reasonable supposition for the theory 
that there was more than one Krishnacharyya who composed the lays. 


^ ShabiduUah, Le» dhanU myttiiws, pp. 28-29. 



onrrA IiIterature ik the eaeet stages 


203 


The name of Ltd frequently occurs in these songs and as Lui is still wor- 
shipped- in Mayurbhanj, the origin of the Garydpadas is supposed to he 
Orissan beyond doubt. But then it is forgotten that Orissa is the resort of all 
decaying faiths, and the process of evolution is still at work. Many sects 
have their stronghold here, and their persistent vitality and the synthetizing 
power of Hinduism must both be credited with ftiU force. 

That Orissa was once a centre of Buddhism is not at all a convincing item 
in the argument; Bengal in the days of the FS>la kings was also predominantly 
Buddliistic in faith. The indications thrown out by philology Me aU to the 
position that the language of the Garydpadas approximates more to Bengali 
than to Oriya, and the contention on this score against MM. Sastri must be 
brushed aside as altogether imtenable. 

The truth seems to be, as has already been observed, that such religious 
songs were a common feature of the times just as ballad literatmre was once 
the form common to aU Europe. The songs found in Nepal are allied to Bengal 
only in their language; in aU other respects they are Indian and transcend 
provincial boundaries. 

A characteristic instance may well be cited here. Towards the close of 
the eighth century there ruled in Orissa a king named 6ubhakara, extremely 
devoted to Buddha, his father was ^ivakara Deva, and his grandfather 
KJiemahkara Deva.i Prof. Sjdvain Levi’s notes on the subject make it dis- 
tinctly clear that this king sent an autographed manuscript (the last section of 
the Avaiamsaka, on the practice of the vow of the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, 
that is the Gapiavyuha, of wliich the original is preserved among the Nepalese 
collections) to the Chinese emperor Te-tsong some time about 7.95 A.D. But 
these notes also make it clear that such currents then freely flowed, ignoring 
all geographical barriers> Prajna, the monk who carried the manuscript 
referred to above, was a t 3 q)ical figure of the times. Bom on the western 
borders of India, he had begun liis studies in North India, continued them in 
Central India, resided in Nalanda, visited the sacred places, thus devoting 
18 years of his life to learning; he had settled down in the monastery of the 
lung of Orissa for the study of yoga there, and next, moved to China where 
he is ImoAvn to have begun his career by trairslating a book in 788 A.D. 

I The earliest specimens of Oriya writing are very difficult to trace. In 
the absence of any distinct examples, Dr. S. K. Chatterji’s general remark about 
the rise and growth of modem Indian languages may be accepted regarding 
Bengali, Oriya, etc. In some liistories of vernacular literatoe, the sayings 
of Dak and Kliana are put down as specimens of an early stage of particular 
literatmes. Some of the sayings of Dak have been collected in the Krushi- 
Paraiara, and a few examples may be as well quoted here : — 

1. maghara casha, sunara kasha. 

2. A-n5,Tnanfl, kai’i casha. Mai nika kari ghasha. 

3. age buna, pache buna 
garbhanaka tuna tuna. 


* "Ejngrajihia Indica, Vol. XV, No. 25. 


204 


B. 0. IiAW VOLUME 


4. yebe barashai magbara eesha 
dhanya se raja dhanya se deSa. 

5. uttara megba dakkhiue pa^e 
nathe boile puta ni^ce barshe. 

6. na di4e basi pa4e 

nathe boile piitare nisce bara^e. 

7. divase hnla hnla, rati ki niramala 

nathe boile putare e de^ chadi anya deSalcu pala. 

8. firavana masara krushna cauthi 
candiga yebe megha na uthi 
phiva pascime yebe na babal ba 
bapa boile pntaxe dedantara ya. 

He must be a bold man -who could claim an antiqtdty for the style, but the 
ideas contained in the sayings have been current through generations, and 
psk has been identified with a popular Buddhist sago with practical sagacity, 
and there is no need to disturb the sa 3 nngB from the antiquarian veneration 
with which they are invested. But that does not affect our position, and they 
are, for practical purposes, outside the scope of historical treatment. 

Barring these sayings of Dak and Khana, it had long been the official 
belief that the inscription of Narasingha Deva II, dated 1296 A.D., contained 
some Oriya words. About a century later, or to be more precise, in 1396 A.D., 
there was another inscription, of Narasingha Deva IV j this contained several 
whole sentences -which showed that the language was by that time fully 
developed, and was little different from modem Oriya in either orthography 
or grammar. Oriya emerged as a written language during the reign of the 
last kings of the Keshari dynasty which takes us to the earlier part of the 
eleventh cfentury. Hunter says that even before Markanda Dasa, the author 
of the Keiava Koili, there was one Narayan Purohit who wrote Vrttarainakar, 
and there was also a royal poet of Ghumsara, Balabhadra Bhanja (1026-1067) 
by name, who wrote Bliavavail, a book sometimes ascribed to Upendra Bhafija 
as' well. But Narayan Purohit and Balabhadra Bhanja are enveloped in 
obscurity which puts a stop to the wandering imagination of the literary 
historian. 

Before the twelfth century, then, we do not come across any Oriya 
inscription, or any inscription written in Oriya characters; in the absence of 
other works, then, we may reasonably conclude that there were no books 
written in the Oriya language then, and therefore worthy to be included in a 
history of Oriya literature. Many works wtitten in those days have grown 
scarce now and may be found to be adorning manuscript libraries in far-off 
Europe. It is possible that works written in those centuries are now forgotten 
.or it may be there were no works written at all in course of the years from 
the twelfth to the fourteenth century. A period of two to three hundred 
' years is a time which a language requires to develop, to get power and strength 
enough to express ideas and receive a hearing. The article contributed to the ' 
Narayaiua by MM. Haraprasad Sastri oni Modem Buddhism is important from 



205 


OBIYA LIIEBAT'IJBE IN THE EAKLY STAGES 

this point of view and is highly suggestive, both as regards Bengali and Oriya 
literature. ' The question of priority may be examined in regard to inscription- 
writing both in Bengali and Oriya. 

Coming to the fifteenth century we find the first warblings of poetry 
sweet lilce the cuckoo’s songs and known by that name — KoUis. The first 
writer of Koilis, according to tradition, is Markanda Dasa, whose caste and 
bhth-place have been variously surmised on slender grounds. His Keiava 
Koili and JHanodaya Koili are simple lyrics — adapted to young and old alike 
— and shot through and through with the Vaishnav sentiment. The form of 
the Koili poems is peculiar; each short verse has for its refrain: *0 Cuckoo I’ 
The whole poem consists of 34 verses, each beginning with a letter of the 
alphabet which consists of thirty-four letters: hence the name of the form is 
Caiiti^a. It has been a popular, almost a conventional, form in Oriya literature. 
The Cauti^a is a favourite form in Bengali literature also. Kalaketu when 
in prison prays to Can^ in this form, each letter of the alphabet, begmning 
with ka, being initially repeated four times in paj/ar verse; ^rimanta on the 
slaughter groimd prays in tripadi verse but in a more stingy manner with 
regard to the number of lines, followed by another Cautisa in payar, all in the 
same ho6k.,'Kavikankancandi: 

Kahe kalaketu mata rakkhibar tare 
Kailasa cha^ya mata ura karagare 
Kali kapalini mata kapolakuntala 
Kalaratri kanjamukh! kata jana kala. 

Again, 

buddhi pradayini, bandhana-nasini 
badha dura kara mata 
bhabani bharati bhavapriya bhuti 
bhairavi bhavapujita. 

Indeed, Bharatchandra goes one better in making it run to fifty letters, vowels 
and consonants combined, and li, both long and short, being included, as well 
• as ang and ah, in his Vidyasundar when Sundar on the slaughter ground 
prays to the goddess Kali for deliverance ficom the extreme danger in which 
he stood. It has been a form in which the best and the greatest, as well as 
those who could not rise beyond a general level, have expressed themselves. 
In this sense it can be called a distinctive feature of the literature, not in the 
sense that it is a unique feature. Jagannath Dasa has adopted the form; 
Upendra Bhanja has written a Cautisa ; and there have been others who have 
not scrupled to use it for the display of their poetic power. The serial order 
of the letters of the alphabet is a mechanical device which the writer is bound 
to conform to, but the credit of the poet lies in overriding the mere firamework 
and putting into it os much honey and dew as his powers afford him. To the 
now defunct Prachi Samiti, more than to any otlier literary association, belongs 
the credit of discovering new Cautisas and publishing them in a separate form 
giving prominence to the rich poems that lie deep below the surface. 



20G 


B. C. LAW VOLTIME 


The Eoili then is a CaiitiSa addressed to a cuckoo. The verses are 
characterized by puns and alliterations, in traditional form. In the Kesava 
Koili Krishna’s mother Yasoda is very much grieved at heart, for Krishna 
has gone to Mathura; she remembers him and pours out her feeling to the bird 
in verses which begin with ha and gradually march up to ksha. An idea of the-^ 
poem may be had from the following English rendering of some of the verses 

0 Koili I Keshva has gone to Mathura. Who called away my son 
I do not know, but he has not returned, 0 KoiH. 

0 Koili ! To whom shah I give thick milk in cakes ? The son 
who would have feasted on them has gone to Mathura, 0 Koili. 

0 Koili ! The son that had departed had not come back. The 
wooded Brindabana did not seem beautiful as before, 0 Koili. 

0 Koili ! My house no more pleases Nanda. Without Govinda 
the town does not look inviting, O Koili. 

0 Kohi 1 Nanda’s body is made of stone, for he dried his son’s 
eyes and set him on the chariot, 0 Koili. 

And so on, until the final verse: 

O Koili 1 with folded palms, says Markai^da, forgive me my faults, 

0 KoiU. 

This is also known as Yasoda KoiU. 

The author is supposed to be a contemporary of Sarala Das, the greatest 
translator into Oriya of the Mdhabharata. B. C. Majumdar in his Typical 
Selections from Oriya Literaiure records Ms impression that the finished form 
of the Kedava KoiU is certainly of a date not later than 1450 A.D., during 
the reign of Kapilendra Deva. 

The text of the Kedava KoiU is given a spiritual interpretation by 
Jagannath Dasa, the great author of the Oriya version of the Bkagavat in his 
ArtJtahoili. Among comparatively old Koili poems may be mentioned 
Barcmasl KoiU by Sankara Dasa and Kdnta KoiU by Balarama Dasa. The 
first is a season poem, much in the nature of Baramasyas or BarSsyas familiar 
to the student of BengaU Uterature; the second refers to Sita. Then there is 
J rianodaya KoiU ; Prof. B. C. Majumdar in Ms Typical Selections ascribes this to 
Lokanatha Dasa, but there is nothing in the text of the Koili to help or warrant 
such an assumption; we have in the concluding verse the name of Natha, not 
Lokanatha, and that, for aught we know, is a generic name, rather than 
indicative of an individual. 

This is the occasion to refer to a poem Kalasa Caiitidd discovered by the 
PracM Samiti and concluded by it to be of the fourteenth century and as the > 
work of Batsa Dasa. It was once very popular and there are references to it 
in the Sarala MahdbJidrata: 

Vedamantra yugate se ye parhanti kalasa. 

VasMshtha Maralcanda avara Durvasa. 

It is not very unreasonable to think that it must have been written about 
100 years earUer to attain, to such a fame. Its tune gave rise to a particular 



VISHVESHYARA SMBITI 


207 


tune called kalasa vanl. The subject-matter of the poem is the marriage of 
Hara and Parvati, described with a grain of humour. 

Simplicity and freshness .characterize these first products of Oriya 
literature. They are, truly speaking, literature for the people, or folic literature. 
With the growth and development of thoughts and forms they have not grown 
out of date,' but have still currency in the hamlets where rural and real Orissa 
lives and dwells. A number of new Koilis hav6 been -written and GaHtiias 
discovered and circulated. It will not bo out of place to mention here again 
the splendid collections of Gauiiids published by the Prachi Samiti of Cuttack 
and edited -with the idea of offering a counterblast to the modem craze for 
foreign forms and types of literature. Though this counterblast may fail of 
its immediate purpose, it will come as a refreshing draught to all lovers of 
pure poetry dressed in simplicity. 


VISHVESHYARA SMRITI 
By 

MAHSlIAHOPADHYiYA Px. BiSHESHWAR NaTH ReTI, Jodhpvu: 

The Manusmriti is universally regarded as the oldest of all the Smritis. 
According to it, not only a widow is forbidden to re-marry but, taking 
into consideration the context of the subject, even a virgin, when betrothed, 
is forbidden to marry other person than the one to whom she is betrothed ^ ; 
whereas in the Parashar Smriti,* a married woman is also permitted to take 
another man, when faced with five sorts of calamities. 

At one place it is laid down in the Manusmriti that a father, on the 
birth of his son, is considered to have been purified by only -talcing bath once,3 
while, at another place, he is considered to be purified after the lapse of ten 
days.^ 

In the same Smriti, looking to the self-contradictory statement about 
the permission ® and non-permission ® regarding the taking of meat, it goes 
to show that possibly, from time to time, the later Pandits (learned men) 
might have managed to insert their own -\riews in the original text. 

In Manusmriti as well as in other similar law-books rules are laid do-wn 
about the right of a * ^ (son by a person other than the husband of his 

mother) to inherit his father’s property, about the *(^^*1* (permission to a 
cliildless widow to have intercourse with the brother or any near kinsman of 
her deceased husband to raise up issue to him),® or about the authority to 
invite, at the time of ‘Shraddha’, mother’s father,- maternal imcle or even 

1 Chapter 9, verse 71. ® Chapter 4, verse 30. 

' 3 „ 6, „ 02. 6, verses 61, 77, 79. 

3 Chapter 3, verses 123, 268-72 and Chapter 5, verses 16, 18, 22, 23, 27, 30-32, 35, 36. 

0 „ 0, „ 45-66. 7 Chapter 9, verse 146. 


208 


B. 6. baW volume 


father-in-law to partake of the dinner,^ but all these are quite contrary to the 
customs prevailing in the present day. 

(Among the southerners the custom of marrying a maternal uncle’s 
daughter also appears to be against tlie dictates of the old law-books of India.) 
In the first chapter of Manusmriti is written: 



II n 


i.e. Svayambhuva Manu, the wise, composed this book. 

In the same chapter the following is written before the above: 


azijs n >1,4. n 

i,e. this Bhrigu would read to you the whole of this sacred book. 

It appears from the above quotations, that the book, which was 
composed by Svayambhuva, the first of the Manus, was read over to the 
other Rishis by his own son or disciple Bhrigu at his behest. 

Again, in the first chapter of Manusmriti, Manu says : 

^ ii ii 

i.e. first of all I created these ten great Rishis as Prajapatis. 

II II 

i.e. these Prajapatis further created seven illustrious Manus. 

In the same chapter Bhrigu further says : 

^ ^ * 
i.e. in the direct line of Svayambhuva, there were six more Manus. 

i.e. these seven illustrious Manus, such as Svayambhuva, etc., after creating 
animate and inanimate beings, protected them in their respective cycles. 

By the above quotations from the first chapter, it appears by Manu’s 
words that Svayambhuva Manu created ten Prajapatis and they in their 
turn procreated seven more Manus but, according to Bhrigu, only seven 
Manus, including SvSyambhuva, were born up till that time. Thus the words 
of the one does not tally with those of the other. 

Prom the above quoted slokas of the first chapter as well as from the use 
of the word the past imperfect tense of the Sanskrit verb 

it becomes evident that this book was compiled by Bhrigu during the cycle 
of Vaivasvata, the seventh Manu, and not in the cycle of Svayambhuva, the 
first Manu. ' 

In addition to the above, this theory is also supported by the mention 
in this Smriti of the liames of only the first seven Manus out of the total of 
fourteen.2 ' , • 


^ Chapter 3, verse 148. 


^ Chapter 1, vwes 61, 62. 


VISHVESHVARA SMBITI 


209 


Further, in the tenth chapter of the same Manusmriti, it is written : 

I! 8^ n 

5BF^T ! 

ftnOcIT W* 11 88 n 

i.e. in course of time, with the non-observance of the religious ceremonies 
and with the disappearance of Bralimanas, the following sub-castes of 
Kshatriyas, viz. Paun^aka, Audra Dravida, Kamboja, Yavana, Saka, 
Parada, Palhava,. China, Kirata, Darada and Kha4a were reduced to the 
status of a ^udra. 

Prom the above couplets it is evident that Menu’s Smriti, which is 
available at this day, w’as compiled after the advent of these tribes into India, 
or it was about the beginning of the Yikram Era that this book was composed. 

In the same (tenth) chapter of this Smriti the following couplet is found: — 

^ ^ n fl 

i.e. the son bom of a (a Brahmana deprived of the investiture with the 
^ sacred thread) is called sinful, Bhurjakaptaka and (according to different 
localities he is also known by the names of) Avantya, Vatadhana, Pushpadha, 
as well as ^aikha. 

Here ‘Saikha’ the Sansloitized form of the Persian word ‘Shekh’, used 
for a convert or as a mark of dignity, is described as the offspring of 
a degenerated Brahmapa. This goes to prove that interpolations were being 
- made in this Smriti up till the conquest of Sindh and Sorath provinces by the 
Mohammedans or up tiU the first half of the ninth century A.D. 

Besides this the refined language used in the Manusmriti, as it is now 
found, also goes to show that it is not a very old work. The same is the 
case wdth the other Smritis too. 

In the old Smritis, wherever, for one reason or the other, an action is 
permitted or forbidden, the reason thereof is not expressed and though each 
and every injunction has been prescribed for the direct or indirect benefit 
of the society yet, according to the prevalent belief, their effect is preserved 
for the next world. Therefore the people of old generation, being ignorant of 
the real motives at the root of these injunctions, follow them blindly and go 
^astray, while the people of younger generation, interested mostly in the 
temporal vrorld, do not pay any heed to them. As an instance of the first 
case, we may take Manu’s injunction about forbidding the passing over of a 
cord with w'hioh a calf is tethered, * ^ simply to avoid 

a fall, as there is every probability that the calf, being frightened, might 
get up and this may result in the fall of the over-passer. But the aged folk, 
unable to grasp the real motive of the said injunction, would either give an 
14 . 



210 


• B. 0. IiAW VOLUME 


ablution to a youngster, who has acted against it, even in the cold weather, 
or would force him to recross it to atone for his fault. 

Due to the above reason as well as to the conditions produced by the 
change of times people have lost some amount .of interest in the Smritis. 
Therefore, when faced with total destruction, the wise would like to save oned# 
half even at the sacrifice of the other half and according to this saying, taking 
advantage of the available laws of Manu and amending the same according to 
the needs of the day, a fresh Smriti, named ‘Vishveshvara Smriti ’ has been 
compiled for inviting the criticism of the learned intelligentsia. 

IVom the various Smritis of the olden times we come to know that even 
the sages of old, with a view to safeguard the welfare of the Hindu society, 
adopted the method of describing the “Enf (duties) of an Aryan and amending 
the same to suit the requirements of the times. . 

Following in their footsteps I have also endeavoured to take up this 
task, giving also the worldly reasons and consequences for the observance of 
the rules, wherever necessary. 

This book is divided into two parts; the first is the main Smriti, con- 
sisting of about 1,200 couplets, while the second part contains the 

old Hindu law as observed at present by the judiciary and has about 3,600 
couplets. ^ 

t 


Below are given some of the couplets : 



1 


'SUfsTi^ TTct: | 

II Tsit, 

n eg. 88. 

II ^ i. 

| 

r^! I 


I4B 


^ ^ -Sim 







VISHVESHVARA SMBUI 


211 


ftraP^IRTfsr flTT «37Tf^: I 

ft|WT II ^y.. 

^sngfi^: ^51^ ^irarr^^fir i 

ftw 11 

^sf^ fJTcl^fhTt 11 8, % 

'gct^fiD 'gr^sr ^ i 

^5 «R?ii((<Ojn<iii 5r ?sn(55iFra ct^ n s, Wt. 

^ ^nwnr^s i 

■-R f«s%ishir*i <rtl«3ii-^gi^<i r«i^f9- ?T^ n 8, ^5^. 

^ *5 ^ I 

^ T? aR^f^eH: H 3?. igjY \o. 

^^swsRTOt rtarnut f*i^! g^-xranpWT n ht. wt. s^. 
jz^sR^ftwiT TTErararc^rT w i 
^rnfh^jw n «r. y^, 

^ Wtsr ^T'W5PRft«fti i 

’^rrf^^s t^. HTJDPt n i, Wt. 4.. 



D i, \o. 

7r#t H5f! n s. 

M N* 

nwnu i ^iw%5^ ^nTci^' 1 

^'^fdSHT! OftxjJinf^^T! n «r. ®, ’so. 
51^ ^ ^ tlft^^lTW '5*1* I 

^pof^ ^nrnt b ®, '«^. 

!4rctm*J f5l% «ri^5 1 

wuraw fai«H3JIi[ ITRfM 'hK'^^ B '®, 

^ I * , 

%«fq ^IT ^reftf^cli^ B '=, W* 
r<S4^4uiK'4t^Klc( I 

II '=, ’3^. l,8£. 



212 


B. O. LAW VOLTTME 


^ MidWf wr cf§^ I 

^RP wt g ^^qRZIT II «£., 'SslY S'®- 

TSMfliri'srw 1 

srarfir 3nHT%»^t ii t; 

f? *? T^reig ^ ^ 1 

II «., y.s- 

gfwi^jraRT ^T«TT snuw^ I 

^ n \», Wt- ’i'®. 

t<cft^«faK<U ?TfiT ^ ^ f^fH^cTT I 

n \®, Wt- R^- 
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RECSENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES ALONG THE 
MAINAMATI AND LALMAI RANGES, TEPPERA DISTRICT, 

EAST BENGAL 

By 

Me. T. N. Ramachanbean, M.A. 

The find of brick structures Cud images of terracotta material in course 
of trench diggings at Mainamati, six miles west of the town of Comilla, was 
brought to my notice by the Collector of Tippera District. An inspection 
was immediately arranged and a survey of a part of the area along the 
Mainamati and Lalmai ranges conducted. Owing to the advanced nature of 
the area from the military point of view a regular survey in a strictly 
archaeological sense could not be attempted and can be taken up only after 
the cessation of war. The results obtained in the course of my brief survey ^ 
are sufficiently indicative, though tentative, of the importance of the area to 
archaeologists. The importance of the discoveries will be best known and a 
valuable contribution made to the history of Bengal when excavation will be 
possible after war. 

Geology. 

Five miles to the west of Comilla rises a low biU range with an average 
^ height' of 90 feet above sea-level and 40 feet above the level of the surrounding 
plains. This low hill extends from Mainamati in the north to Lalmai Railway 
Station in the south,^for a distance of about 10 roiles, north to south, and is 
called Mainamati range near Mainamati and Lalmai range farther down where 
it widens {vide plan, Plate XVII). To the west of the range lies Tripura 
State. The hill is called Lalmai (Rohitagiri) from the fact that it is made 
up of slightly micaceous, yellow-coloiured sandstone and ferruginous concre- 
tions, which when decomposed colour the top of the hiU brick-red. Hori- 
zontal intercalations of clay, only a few inches thick, varying in colour from 
white to dark black and occasional occurrences of argillaceous nodules mark 
the MU. Quartz pebbles are also observed but rarely. Near Chandipur the 
hill is called Chandimura (mum is hill), and tMs part of Lalmai is of sufficient 
geological importance, for here the character of the rock changes. Ohandi- 
mura contains no micaceous material but consists of a conglomerate of de- 
composed rocks, mainly sandstone, with lumps of soft shaly mudstone here 
and there. Ferruginous concretions and quartz pebbles are rare but fossil ' 
wood abounds, the fragments completely silicifiied and some of them attaining 
considerable dimensions with diameter of several inches. But aU lie hori- 
zontaUy, apparently parallel to one another such as woxild be the case when 
drifted by strong current. Specimens picked up by us within our area of 
e:q)loration were investigated by the experts of the Geological Survey of 


1 In this survey Messrs. K. G. Goswomi of the Calcutta TTniveisity and Basmohan 
Chakravarti, Superintendent, Bammala Chhatravas, Comilla, 'were helpful, and I am thankful to 
them. ' ' 



214 


B. 0. I 1 A.W VOLTTMB 


India and. the Calcutta University and w® declared as of dicotyledonous 
plants closely allied to the genus Glvioxyhn already Imown from here.i 
Chittagong and Tippera are treated as a single botanical province, and accord- 
ing to Das Gupta and Sen as the Lalmai beds, where fossil woods are found, 
correspond to that of the Irrawaddy Division of Burma it may be concluded-' 
that the Lalmai rocks are most probably also of Pliocene Age like the rocks of 
the Irrawaddy Division. 

Mounds of ATckaeological Interest. 

T.ilm its geological importance the Lalmai area affords sufficient interest 
to the archaeologists. The plains are studded with what appear to be en- 
tombed ruins, a supposition which proved to be nearly correct in an area 
four to the south-west of Comilla where the Central Public Works 
Department cut through a few mounds and extracted a large amount of bricks 
from well-planned structures. The Collector’s report regarding the diggings 
in the military area gave me high hopes of archaeological discoveries at Maina- 
mati, as the name ‘Mainamati’ is in Bengal history and religion sufficient to 
conjure up a vista of archaeological wealth. 

The Name MainamaR. 

‘Mainamati’, the name by which the village and the adjoining hill are 
known today, recalls the name of Queen Mayanamati (Madanavati), the wife 
of Ma^chandra of the Chandra dynasty that ruled in Bengal in the tenth 
and eleventh centuries A.D. Many ballads 'are popularly srmg in Bengal in 
which the queen and her son Gopichandra figure. Some of these are collected 
in Qopichandrer-gana, Vols. I and II (published by the Calcutta University), 
Oopichandrer-sanydsa, edited by Abdul Sukkur Muhammad, and Mlnachelana 
edited by Dr. liT. £.. Bhattasali. ..According to Taxanatha and some of these 
ballads, Gopichandra was a ruler of Mrikula (now known as Meharkula in 
Tippera District). 


1 Similar fossil 'wood specimens have been collected from this area and studied by the late 
Mr. Hem Chandra Das-Gupta in 1906, by Mr. IST. H. Chatterji in 1039 and by Mr. Anil Mukheiji 
in 1942. Such studies have led esperts to declare the Lalmai range as of exertional interest 
beca'UBe the fossil wood finds help in correlating the Lalmai or Tippera rocks with the other 
Indian rook systems of known age, particularly ■with ‘the fossil wood group of Burma’. The 
Lalmai range has been supposed to correspond 'to the lower series of the Irrawaddy Bi'vision. 
The fossil wood that ■was e x a mi n e d so tax is supposed to be of the genus Olutoxylon (the two 
Bpetnea of CfltiSa, O. Tavoyana and Q. Travancorica, show much similarity with Lalmai specimens). 
Its presence as fossils in the Mainamati area sho'ws that its distribution ■was ■wider in the post.. 
Besides Travancore and Tinnovelly in South India and Tenasserim in Lower Burma it sdso existed 
in Bengal and Assam. The total absence of the li'ving species from Bengal is, according to 
geologists, either due to its extinction or migration to more genial climatic conditions and that 
the Quaternary Ice Age, ■with its world-widaefiect, mi^t have been responsible for the change in 
its habitat and distribution. 'Eat details see (1) Journal and Proceedings oj the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal, yol. IV (1908), pp. 349-51; (2) Quarterly Journal, Geological and Mining and Met. 
Society, India, Vol. H, pp. 139-41; Vol. XIV, Ho. 2, pp. 76-81; (3) Science and Culture, 
Vol. VH, No. 7, pp, 370-71 ; Vol. VH, No. 11, pp. B73-74. 


ABOHABOLOGIOAL DISOOVEEIES A£03TG MAINAMA!Et & T.AT.WAt BANGES 21 5 
Sahajayana. 

In the old Bengali Charya-padas, whose subject matter centres round the 
mystical esoteric doctrines and Yogio theories and practices of the Buddhist 
Sahajayana and whose authors (twenty-two authors of forty-seven Charyas 
^out of a total of fifty), according to Dr- S. K. Chatterji, .belonged to a period 
rougUy between 950-1200 A.D., we find a hierarchy of Siddha poets who 
figme in the Gopichand legends also. They are Matsyendranatha, Gk)rakh- 
natha, Jalandliari-pada or Hadi-pa and £lanha-pa, the last mentioned assign- 
able to the end of the twelfth century. Kanlia-pa’s Guru was Jalandhari- 
pada or Hadi-pa, who was himself a disciple of Gorakh-nath, a great Saivite 
Yogi and Siddha. Queen Mainamata was Gorakh-nath’s disciple, while Hadi- 
pa figures in the legend-cycle of her son Gopichanda. This legend-cycle 
speaks of Gopichanda’s unwilling rmmnciation, while young, of his kingdom 
and his wives, Adima and Paduna, at the request of his mother Maina^mati, 
who by dint of her Yogic powers had come to know that he could not other- 
wise be saved from premature death, and also how he left his home as a disciple 
of Hadi-pa, a Guru of low caste, who is no other than Gorakh-nath’s disciple 
referred to in the Cliarya-padas?- The Sahajayana referred to in the Gharya- 
padas relates to mystic Buddhism like Vajrayana. In Vajrayana cere- 
monials were emphasized, while in Sahajayana ceremonials were dispensed 
with, though the- goal of both was the same, viz. MahaaukJia. The Saha jaySna 
is further attested to by an inscription of the thirteenth century A.D., engraved 
on a copper-plate found at Mainamati which records a grant of land in favour 
of a Buddhist monastery built in the city of Pattikera by Bapavahkamalla 
Harikaladeva in A.D. 1220 in the seventeenth year of his reign and which 
speaks of a superior officer of the royal groom as practising the Sahajadharma 
in Pattikeraka.2 ' 

The Kingdom of Pattikera. 

Pattikera was the capital of the kingdom of that name mentioned in 
Burmese Chronicles as Patikkara or Pateikkara and which may be traced as 
far back as the eleventh century A.D.® A pwrgwnd of Tippera District which 
extends to Mainamati hills is still known as Patikaxa or Paitkara and in older 
documents as Patikera or Paitkera. This helps us to look for Pattikera of the 
copper-plate in this pargand. Of particular in-terest is the e-vidence furmshed 
by an inscription of the seventh century A.D. referring.^to a royal palace or 
residence at Harmanta, the modem Badkamta, 12 miles west of Comilla and 
6 miles west of Mainamati in Tippera District. Later records, such as the 

1 Refer MS. of 47 Charya-padas composed by 22 poets in old Bengali with Sanskrit com- 
mentary, discovered by MM. Haraprasad Sastri} the Bislotry of Singed, Vbl. I (ed. by R. 0. 
Maiumdar), pp. 383-86. 

s Indian Historical Quarterly, Vol. IX, p. 282. 

S The manuscript AsiasSItasrika FrajHaparamila, copied in 1016 AJ>., contains the picture 
of the sixteen-armed Budclhist Goddess Chu^^a with the label ‘Pattikero Chupdavarabhavane 
Chup^S.*. 



216 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


Baghaura inscription of the time of the Pala king Mahipala (eleventh century 
A.D.) and the MeVinr copper-plate of Damodaradeva (1234 A.D.) establish the 
coimeotion of Samatata with the modem Tippera District. In Samatata was 
situated the principality or the kingdom of Pattikera, whose existence accord- 
ing to recent finds at Mainamati can be traced as far back as the eighth century. 
A.D. Coins siTm‘1a.r to certain symbolical coins of the Chandra dynasty of 
Arakan, who had their capital at Wethali in Axakan from 788 to 957 A.D., 
and terracotta plaques with representations of Arakanese and Burmese men 
and women were found at Mainamati which throw light on the relation between 
India and Burma in the eighth to tenth centuries A.D. In the coins the name 
of the principality is given as Patikera wliile the Burmese Chronicles refer to 
this kingdom as Patikkara, the country of Kalas or foreigners which bounded 
on the west the Idngdom of Anoratha (1044-1077 A.D.) and also to a king 
‘Pateikkara of the kingdom of Marawa’. The references in the Burmese 
Chronicles imply, but do not prove, that this kingdom was an independent 
State diiring the eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D., when the Pala and Sena 
kin gs were ruling over Bengal. An intimate intercourse between this kingdom 
and the kingdoms of Burma is proved by these Chronicles, and inter-marriages 
in the royal families between the two countries were also common. Pattikera 
princes and princesses figure m the romances and tragedies in Burmese annals, 
poems and melo-dramas, and the names of the Burmese king Kyanzittha 
(1084-1112 A.D.), Alaungsithu and Narathu are well known.i Indian 
Buddhism was welcomed by Kyanzittha who built the Ananda temple at 
Pagan after the temples of the Indian mainland. The Ananda temple is 
described as the best creation of Indo-Burmese art. Harikaladeva Rana- 
vahkamaUa, who in 1220 A.D. was presumably ruling as an independent king, 
appears to have been a feudatory chief, who along with two other ruling 
familieB with name-endings -dem came to power after the collapse of the Sena 
power in the thirteenth century A.D. Strangely enough we do not hear of the 
principality of Pattikera after Harikaladeva; only the name survives in the 
modem pargana of Patikara or Paitkara. Probably it was absorbed in the 
growing kingdom of the Deva family. 

The, Chandras of Eastern Bengal. 

Another kingdom like the principality of PattikerS that flourished around 
modem Comilla between 900 and 1050 A.D. was that of the Chandras, whose 
existence is known from inscriptions.® This Chandra dynasty receives pro- 
minent mention at the hands of Lama TarSnatha, though there is not sufficient 
evidence to prove its existence from the sixth to the eighth' centuries A.D. as 
TarSnatha attempts to. We learn from inscriptions, coins and Burmese 
Chronicles of a dynasty of kings that ruled in the Ar akan region in the seventh 


1 Phayre, History of Burma, pp. 49-60; History of Bengal (ed. by Dr. R. C. Maiumdar), 
Vol. I, pp. 267-68. 

* History of Bengal, Vol. I (ed. by Dr. R. C. Majumdar), pp. 19^-97, 



. AECJBlAEOLOGICAIj DISOOVEBEEB ALONG MAINAMATl & LAUMAl BAKGES 217 

century A.D. and even earlier. Their names end in -ohandra and an account 
of nine of them inling from 788 to 967 A.D. is recorded in the Burmese Chro- 
nicles.^ Coins similar to those found in Arakan and figured by Phayre have 
• been found near Mainamati in the present survey,* and bka them, have to 
illlbe assigned on palaeographical grounds to the seventh or eighth century A.D., 
if not earlier. While the coins fotmd in Arakan speak of Dharmachandra, 
Pntichandra and Viraohandra in reject of the Chandra dynasty of Arakan, 
exactly similar thin silver issues, also symbolical in purpose, were found at 
Mainamati with the legend PatikSrya above couchant humped bull on the 
obverse, and the trident with Sun and Moon above and garlands hanging 
from it on the reverse. One such coin, out of a hoard of 63, found in the 
enclosure of Anandaraja’s palace ruins (Mound No. 5) in Mainamati is figured 
here (Plate V, fig. 1). Vincent Smith notices another similar coin with the 
legend i§n ^ivasya and remarks that such coins were found buried among 
old ruins in Arakan and were supposed to belong to the Chandra dynasty 
that tradition records as liaving ruled between 788 and 957 A.D. While 
the date of such coins found at Mainamati is determinable from the palaeo- 
graphy of the legends on the coin figured (PI. V, fig. 1), the name Pafikerya 
is of singular interest to us for our study of the archaeology of Mainamati. 
It at once refers to the famous Pattikeralca-vihdra of the Pala period which 
ranked in importance with such ancient Buddhist monasteries as of Odanta- 
puri, Somapura, VikTama^fia, Nalanda, Traikutaka, Devikota, Pan^ta, 
Sannagara, Jagaddala, Phullahari and Vikramapuri. Anandar&ja’s palace 
mound in Mainamati was definitely a monastery, probably the renowned 
Pattikeraka monastery itself, and the coin in question was a symbolic issue 
of this, while perhaps the Chandras were ruling Eastern Bengal. 

The Chandras of Rohitdgiri. 

Prom inscriptions we hear of six such Chandra kings that ruled in Eastern 
and/or Southern Bengal between 900—1050 A.D. with JRohitagiri, perhaps 
Tnndpim T.al-mn.i hiUs now surveyed, as their capital. First is Layahachandra 
whose "kingdom has to be located around modem Comilla. Next we have 
e''ridence of a dynasty as follows ; — 

Pumachandra 

I 

Suvamachandra 

*1 

Trailokyachandra 

Srichandra 

Go'mdachandra 

1 Phayre, Coins of Arakan, of Pegu and of Burma, pp. 28-30 and 42. 

* Phayre, Plate II, fig. 12. 



218 


, p, O. LAW VOLUME 


It seems fairly certain that Eohitagiri, the seat of these Chandras, was 
probably near. Comilla and perhaps included the present Lalmai hills, five 
miles to the west of Comilla.i ‘Eohitagiri’ and ‘Lalmai’ both mean ‘red hill’. 
Suvarnachandra is said to have become a follower of Buddha, and his successors 
were also Buddhists. The history of this family stops with ^richandra and' 
we have no information of his successor, ^tichandra appears to have flourished 
at the close of the tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century A.D. Govinda- 
chandra [also with his name ending with -chandra], who is referred in the 
accounts of Bajendraohola’s invasion of Bengal (1021 A.D.), appears to have 
succeeded Srichandra. In what relationship both Layahachandra and 
Govindachandra stobd to the Chandra dynasty beginning with Purnachandra 
is not kno'vm', it is likely that they were of the same family .2 The Chandra 
kingdom appears to have been destroyed by the invasion of the Kalachuri Karpa 
(1041-1070 A.D.) and we do not hear of it after the middle of the eleventh 
century A.D. It is thus easy to appreciate that the Mainamati and Lalmai 
billR that^form the venue of the present survey "witnessed the glory of the 
Chandra kings and the kings of the Pattikera principality from about the 
eighth to the thirteenth centuries A.B. 

Mounds in Mainamati Village. 

At Mainamati itself, five miles west of Comilla several mounds were 
noticed in an extensive plain. In an area of one square milej 20 such were 
noticed within the military bounds from the river Gumti in the north to 
the local survey school in the south (Plate XVII, Plans 1, 2 and 2A). Near 
one of these mounds (2) it was reported to me by the District Magistrate 
that trench diggings had exposed a stone image of a Jaina Tirthafikara and 
potsherds. The image could not be recovered and it was reported that 
the Station Staff Officer at Mainamati had probably removed it somewhere 
for safety. The potsherds were, however, with Mr. Easmohan Chakravarti, 
Superintendent of the Eammala Library, ComiUa, and were available for 
my examination. They were mostly bits of pans, pots, lids and pot-rests, 
with such designs as the zig-zag, herring-bone, chess-board and ohe'^uon. 
They were evidently bits from pottery of monastic use. Eegarding the stone 
image itself, we have the testimiony of Mr. E. M. Chakravarti who saw it 
a couple of months before we started the survey and told me that it was 
a nude image, from which it was easy to recognize a Jaina Tirthankara 
image. No other Jaina remains could be noticed in the locality. We do not 
hear much of Jaioism m East Bengal. The existence of . a Jaina Vihara in 
the fourth century A.D. at Vata-Gohali in the present site of Pahaipur, Hiuen 
Tsang’s reference in the seventh century A.D. ■to the influence the Nirgranthas 
had in North, South and East Bengal, the subsequent disappearance from 
Bengal of the sect of Nirgranthas during the Pala and Sena period, the probable 

1 History of Bengal, Vol. I (ed. by Dr. R. C. Maiumdar). p. 194 . 

* Ibid,, p. 196. 



ABCJHAEOLOaiOAt DISCOVEBIES ALONG MAINANtATl & T.At.tmat baNGES 219 

assimilation of the Nirgranthas to'wards the end of the Pala period in the 
Avadhutas and such other religious sects and the te-estahUshment in Northern 
Bengal during the Muhammadan period of the old religion in its new form, 
thanlis to the services of Jaina immigrants from Western India—are some 
►of the features in the development of Jainism in Bengal. Its sway in East 
Bengal in contrast to the spectacular hold that Buddhism had in Bengal was 
not much. As at Paharpur, so also at Mainamati, Jainism appears to have 
flourished side by side with Buddhism and Brahmanism. It is likely that 
subsequent excavations near mound 2 may reveal Jaina vestiges. 

Brdhrmnical Imagzs.^ 

Brahmanical images in and around Mainamati have been known for a long 
time; some of them are now kept in the Eammala Library, Comilla, under the 
custody of Mr. Ohakravarti.i Indeed the best specimen is an image of Surya of 
black chlorite, revealing Pala workmanship (Pl.IV). The iconographic details of 
Surya (Bhaskara) are completely represented. Within a background, 3' 10* X 
1' 11', stands Surya erect holding symmetrically a lotus in each hand, while 
flying Vidyadhara couples hovering above, parasol juxtaposed right in the 
centre over his head, eleven Suryas (out of the twelve dvadaia-Adityas) and 
GaneSa flanking him, Danda and Pihgala standing one on each side, an 
attendant-woman {Chdmaradlidririi) on either side, his consort, Chhayadevi, in 
front of his legs, Anma in front driving a rotunda of seven horses and Ushas 
and Sandhya symmetrically poised below at the extreme ends as bow-women 
— are detailed with such narrative wealth and exuberance that the sculpture 
can go as the best 'specimen of 'symmetria prisca’ such as is described by 
Leonardo da Vinci, while its Pala date is easily recognized. It was represented 
to me that this image was found some years ago from the river Gumti in the 
hamlet of Pakilaxa near Mainamati Post OfSce (Plate IV). 

Other images of similar date found at Varella, three miles north of Maina- 
mati represent Vasudeva, Hara-Gauri, Jagadhatri, Ganesa and Vishpu. The 
material is black clrloiite and workmanship Pala. It would be easy and 
refreshing to discover that the place harboured all the religions of the time. 

Kutila-mura and Bairagi-mura (Mounds 3 and 4). 

One mile to the south of Mainamati survey school are two mounds known 
as Eutila-mura and Bairagi-mura, both situated on the Mainamati range (3 and 
4 of Plan). Kutila-mura is an extensive mound about a furlong square. 
Possil wood specimens of the genus Gflutoxylon were picked up in this area. 
Potsherds with designs such as squares, herring-bone and clubs were collected 
from the surface in large number (Plate ill, fig. 14). To the west of these 
mounds lies Bairagi-mura (No. 3). ^ Luckily these mounds have not been visited 
by the contractors ih their search for bricks and hence appear to be promising 
for scientific excavation. 

1 I 1»«m that OS a measure of eafety ovrfng to vrar, they have since been removed to 
Brahmaaberia, Tippera District. 



220 


B. O. IiAW> VOLUME 


Anandaraja’s Palace Ruins (Mound No. 5). t 

A big mound (No. 5 of plan), about a furlong square and one and a half 
miles to the south of Kutila-mura and four miles to the south-vrest of Comilla 
(Plate I, a), was the scene of heavy depredation for bricks. Cart-loads of 
bricks were removed from this mound before action could be taken to check.! 
The ruins revealed, however, on plan a square monastery about a furlong each 
side, with an arrangement, as at Paharpur, of a central temple with recessed 
comers and re-entrant angles. Probably the arrangement of the central temple 
resulted, as at Paharpiur, in a craciform shape with one projecting angle between 
the arms of the cross. It is evident from what has been exposed by the 
contractors that the remains of a temple surrounded by a monastery existed 
here. The recessed angles of the central temple revealed an arrangement, as 
at Paharpur, of walls which were relieved on the outer face by projecting 
mouldings and cornices of ornamental bricks on top with designs of stepped 
pyramid, lotus petals (cyma recta), chess-board patterns and bands of terracotta 
plaques set in recessed panels below runniug around the basement. Bricks 
of large size supported these plaques on the bottom thereby forming a sunk 
panel for the plaques to be assembled. There were no traces of any binding 
material that held these plaques or tho cornices above and the bricks below 
together. Similar comice patterns and arrangement of terracotta plaques 
are also known from Mahasthan* in Bengal and Burma, Siam and Java. 
In the central temple enclosure were recovered a large number of terracotta 
plaques with carvings drawn from divine, semi-divine, human, animal, bird 
and aquatic lives and ornamental bricks and other decorative pieces of terracotta 
material that had gone to dress the fa 9 ade of the basement. It was evident 
that the decorative plaques were meant to catch the eye of the circumambu- 
lating worshippers. It was easy to discover that the site is prominently 
Buddhist, the ensemble of evidence from plaques, architecture, and style of 
sculpture lending support to this conclusion as also to a period from the eighth 
to the tenth centuries A.D. to which they should be referred. 

Terracotta Plaques. 

The plaques recovered from the central temple enclosure here offer very 
interesting study, as at Paharpur and Mahasthan in North Bengal and in 
similar monuments of Pagan where also they decorated the outer walls revealing 
the same dynamic movement and expressive of popular fancy and folk imagina- 
tion or folk art. In the art that these terracottas reveal we cannot see much 
of Pala and Sena artistic tendencies as both Pala and Sena constituted ’a 
hieratic school in which little scope was afforded to folk art. If we remember 
this it will be easy to appreciate that the themes are drawn from the daily 

^ I take this opporttimty to ofier my thanks toSrs. Shyama Prasad Mookerji, R. C.Majumdar, 
Kalidns Nag, Hon’ble Justice Edgley and Rao Bahadur K. N. Bikshit, who kindly and ably 

helped me in checking brick depredations in Mainnmati and Lalmai areas of such archaeological 
proroise. 

* A.S.I., A.R., 1836-37, Plates XV and XVL 


AROHAEOLOGIOAL DISCOVERIES AL0K6 MAINAMATI & LALMAl RANGES 221 

life of the people, from all creations of God and nature in the various stages 
of activity, emotion, movement and rest. There is a purposeful rhythm 
ruiming through tho whole series, as at Paharpur, which intimately connects 
this folk art with contemporaneous stone representations of the hieratic 
religious art of Bengal of the period- Besides giving us a true insight into the 
real social life of the people of those days they help to throw a flood of li ght 
on the history of the place and the religion of the monuments which they were 
decorating. Divine and semi-divine figures, composite aiximals, hybrids, 
Gandharvas, Kin naras, Blimpurushas, celestial musicians, Vidyadharas and 
ITakshas among the demi-gods, men and women in various movements, war- 
riors, archers, acrobats balancing bodies on their hands, sages and ascetics, 
musicians with their instruments, and domestic and family studies are re- 
presented with all their local and ethnical characteristics. Among animals, lion, 
wild, boar, antelope and pig are popular while motifs such as iVIakara, Vy&la 
(leograph) and addorsed lions are worth mentioning. Similarly we finri ducks 
and tho royal swan or Jmmsa. Among gods only Buddha and Padmapa^i 
are depicted and it would appear that representations of divinities of the 
hierarchical religion are rare. The flora is not omitted and meandering 
creepers, lotuses and the Greek acanthus, the last as a motif, appear to have 
been popular, while Gupta art seems to have influenced the style of workman- 
ship. A few selected specimbns are figured here to illustrate. Among human 
beings warriors in action with shield and dagger (Plate X, fig. 3), with sword 
in left hand (Plate X, fig. 2), with dagger in right, the left in a threatening 
attitude {tarjinl — ^Plate X, fig. 1), and killing tiger (Plate X, fig. 4) and archers 
(Plate X, fig. 6) offer interesting study. Prom a description of Vidyadharas 
being associated with swords given in the Vishniidharmotfara (Chapter 42, 
w. 9-10) it is possible to identify some of the warriors here as Vidyadharas, 
particularly those who appear to fly and wear lotus-boots as at Paharpur 
(Plate X, figs. 1, 2, 3, 6, 6 and 7). A bearded and emaciated sage in an 
attitude of dancing (Plate XI, fig. 6) forms the subject of another plaque. 
A Brahmin with moustache, small knotted beard and three stranded Yajno- 
pavlta with his wife sitting by his side and child on his lap forms an interesting 
domestic study (Plate XI, fig. 7). Another plaque shows a lady seated with 
right hand resting on her thigh and left hand touching her head as though 
bemoaning her fate and this would recall a famihar Indian mode of egression 
of grief or pensiveness (Plate XI, fig. 8). A plaque showing the Buddha seated 
in Vajrasana with right hand in bhumisparia attitude (Plate Vll, fig. 6) and 
another representing Padmapani seated in muhardju-liJoi pose, with kun^los 
in the ears, braided hah in cm-ls, right hand resting on the ground and left 
holding lotus by its stalk (Plato VII, fig. 6) are the best specimens from here 
of the hieratic religious art of Bengal which was prevailing under the Palas. 
Representations of the demi-gods form the majority. Vidyadharas plate 
Vni, figs. 3 and 6 ; Plate IX, figs. 3 and 6) are depicted on tlnee best specimens 
of reaUstio study. A Vidyadhari, who formed part of a Vidyadhara couple 
that was hovering in the sky, forms the subject-matter of yet another plaque 



222 


B. O. LAW VOLXrSIJS 


that recalls the Gupta style of art (Plate IX, fig. 2). While VidySdharas are 
human, the Gandharvas and the Kinnaras are hybrid in character. Certain 
texts describe a Kinnara as. one with human figure and head of horse, or 
horse’s body and the head of a man. Other texts draw a distinction between 
Kiimara and Ejihpurusha by ascribing horse-head and human body to the- 
Kinnara and human head and horse-body to the Kimpurusha.i The Gan- 
dharvas are celestial musicians who sing and dance and hold a lute or a churning 
stick or other musical instruments. The Xiimaras are likewise celebrated as 
choristers in epic and classical poetry. The hybrid character of the Gan- 
dharvas, which they share with Kinimras and Kiihpurushas, is also interesting 
to the student of comparative philology, as for this reason it is possible to 
trace an etymological connection between Sanslcrit Gandharva and centauri 
Greek Kentauros, Avestic Gandarewa, Iranian Gandarewa, and Dravidian 
Kudirai.2 Indian sculpture does not exhibit much difference in their concep- 
tion in the three schools of Buddhism, BLihduism and Jainism except in details 
of workmanship and style.8 It is interesting, though confusing, that aU the 
variant descriptions are supported by sculptures and paintings found in India 
and Ceylon. Sculptures from Bharhut and Sanchi in Central Lidia, Pahaipur 
in Bengal, Udaigiri, Eameswaram, Kanchipuram and Kallam in South India 
and paintings from Ajanta (Hyderabad) are a few cases to illustrate the point. 
A beautiful rendering of a Kinnara with animal’s legs and upper body and 
face human, with wings instead of arms and the head decorated with lotus 
foliage and the ears with and fierce looking eyes such as are 


1 Vachaspatyai Bhagavata PurSifa, Book VH, CJbotpor 20} but VishpudJiarmottara (Book 
m, Chapter 42, versos 13.14) recognizes two classes of Kinnara — one with horse-body and human 
bead and the other vice versa. But the MSnasara, which is a standard work on the subject, 
describes the Kimiara as with legs of ammals, upper body like that of man, face with Garuda 
features, arms provided with wings, the crown decorated with lotus, etc. This description is 
also found in Ceylon. 

s In Vedic literature the Bonnaras figure under the name Kiihpurusha and are reckoned 
among the Gandharvas as celestial musicians. According to the Jainas the Gandharvas and 
Kiimaras constitute one of the eight orders of the Vyantaros. The Malsya Pura^ describes 
the Gandharvas as flying in the cloud region with tbeir consorts, the Apsarasas, nnd holding 
garlands and bunches of flowers, the idea being that they hurry to the shrine to worship the 
deity. Their main functions being music and dance, they have to be distinguished from their 
compeers, the Vidyadbaras and the Yakshas, who are described as the chief repositories of secret 
learning. 

® Grunwedel enumerates six classes of secondary gods in Brahmin mythology, viz.: 
(1) Kinnaras, (2) Kimpurushas, (3) Gandharvas, (4) Fannagas or Kagas, (6) Siddhas, and 
(6) Vidyadharas. These correspond more or less to the Vyantara gods of the Jaina, viz. : Fitachas, 
Bhutas, Yakshas, Bakshasas, Kinnaras, Kimpurushas, Mahoragas and Gandharvas. The eight 
classes of deim-gods enumerated in Buddhist literature are-Devas, Nagas, RSkriiasas, Gandharvas, 
Asuros, Garudas, Kinn aras and Mahoragas. Ih the Brahmin mythology cited by Grunwedel and 
^jendralal Mitra, the Gandharvas are assigned to a class of secondary gods or attendants, which 
includes (1) Kinn aras, Kubera’s musicians who have human body and horse’s head; (2) Kim* 
purusbas with human face and the body of a bird, often confounded with BLumoras and 
Gandharvas; (3) Gandharvas with htunon bust and a bird's body whose wives are the ApsarSsas; 

Nagas; (6) Siddhas flying in the air and appearing anywhere at any moment; 
( ) vidyadharas or celestial students skilled in all knowledge; (7) Yakshas; (8) Bakshasas, etc. 




ABOHASOLOGIOAL DISCOVEEIES AIiOKG MADTAMAQ?! & T.AT.TtfAT RanqkS 22S 

associated -with the Garuda bird, fonns the subject-matter of a very interesting 
plaque (Plate VT, fig. 1). A Kimpumshi, -urith human head and animal’s 
bodyi is illustrated in another plaque (Plate Vni, fig. 4). A Yaksha figure in 
frontal pose with hands held in iarpa-mmudra is shown on yet another plaque 
^(Plate IX, fig. 6). Among animals, antelope (Plate XIH, fig. 10), wild boar 
(Plate XIV, fig. 7), pig and lion (the last being a poor study— Plate XIEI, 
fig. 1) and animal complexes and decorative motifs such as Mdkara (Plate 
XVI, fig. !•), VyaU or leograph with profuse lion’s mane (Plate Xm, fig. 6), 
and addorsed lions going on comer brackets afford interesting study. The 
hamsa or the royal swan with bent neck and with plumed tail (Plate XVI, 
fig. 9) among birds and the Greek acanthus occurring here as a motif (Plate 
XVI, fig. 3) provide a refreshing study. 

Bricks found in this area are of various sizes and shapes, the largest 
size being 13^" x Q*' x 2^^" ; while rectangular bricks constitute the majority, 
square bricks and tiles are also known. Ornamented bricks, which decorated 
the mouldings and which agree in design and decoration with those found 
at Pahaipur and Bangarh, present very interesting major and minor designs 
and geometrical patterns. A few are fflustrated in Plate m (figs. 1-5). It 
wiU be seen that the bell-shaped stupa was a popular major design as elsewhere 
(fig. 6) and the zig-zag (fig. 4), the chevron, the stepped pyramid, cynm recta 
(Plate VI, fig. 1) and dental edges with zig-zag course between (Plate III,' 
fig. 3) were popular decorative patterns. Potsherds were picked up in large 
numbers and one can readily recognize that they were of pans, lids and pots, 
some of them -svith designs, such as chevron, straight lines, herring-bone, 
squares and trellis (Plate in, figs. 6-10, 13, 15-16). A potsherd of the black 
variety "with beautiful glaze and with an interesting design on its edge look- 
ing like letters (Plate HI, fig. 17) was picked up from the centre. The design 
is perhaps more calligraphic than epigraphic in intent. Among other things 
found here mention may be made of two fossil wood pieces of the genus 
Qluta and sixty-three thin silver coins. Only one coin in this group which 
could be recovered has been described already (Plate V, fig. 1). 

Bupban-Kanyd’s Palace (Mound No. 6). 

To the south of Anandaraja’s palace ruins is another mound (No. 6 of 
Plan) called Rupban-Kanya’s palace. The mound measures about 400 feet 
square and is 15 feet high from the surro und i n g paddy field. Traces of a 
central structure and enclosing walls can be made out. A stone cubical 
pillar base sho'wing the design of a chaitya "window on each side was foim^ in 
the centre of the mound suggesting the existence of a stone mandapa or shrine. 
Terracotta plaques and bricks of various sizes, maximum being 13 X ll-J X 

were also in evidence. Though brick depredation was heavy here, traces 
of a structure, perhaps a monastery ■with arrangement of central temple and 
surrounding cells can be noticed. A few plaques were also recovered which 
show the semi-divine Yaksha, the hybrid Kiihpurusha and the wild boar 
in all its -wild majesty. 



224 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Bhojaraja's Palace (Mound No. 7). 

Near jEtupban-Kanya’s palaco and half a railo to tho soutli of Anandaraja’s 
palace are tho ruins called Bhojaraja’s palaco in an area of about 400 feet 
square (Plate II, fig. a). TJio arrangement was similar to that of Anandaraja’s 
palaco with a small motmd about 30 foot high, in tho centre. Tho digging for 
bricks here had exposed well laid out brick courses and a square toraplo with 
massive walls (Plato 11, fig. h) and with its basement profusely decorated 
with carved plaques and ornamental bricks. Tliough brick spoliation had 
been heavy hero, a chamber, 6 foot square, found in tho centre suggests that 
the central structme may have been composed of box-like chambers as at 
Medh (Mahasthan) (Plato II, fig. b). Bricks of various sizes, tho maximum 
size being 13"xllJ*x2|'' wore also recovered. But tho terracotta plaques 
with interesting car\ungs drawn from human, divine, somi-divine, animal, 
bird lives and flora as at Anandaraja’s palaco afford interesting study. Among 
animals, the elephant (Plato XIV, fig. 4) marching magnificently Avith 
its usual gait, called by poets kunjara~gati (PI. XVIII, fig. 10), tho buffalo 
bending and scratcliing its head with its leg (Plato XIV, fig. 5), tho ^vild boar 
in an attacking mood (Plato XIV, fig. 6), tho rhinoceros, tho antelope and the 
chameleon on a tree-branch are worth mentioning. Tho buffalo and the wild 
boar (Plato XIV, figs. 5 and 6) are mastotpiocos of realistic study in terracotta 
material. Among birds tho royal swan (harhsa) with its plumed and foliated 
toil seems to have caught tho fancy of the local artists. Tho hamsa pecking 
at or holding in its beak a string of pearls is also kno\ni (Plate XVI, 'fig. 8). 
The subject-matter and tho conception of ‘the hamsa and tho pearl string’ 
(MiMaplmla-lohlii Kalahaihsa) would at once recall tho golden ago of tho 
classical art that was ushered in tho Gupta period. Among flowers, tho lotus 
juxtaposed between foliated acanthus (Plato XVI, fig. 4) seems to have been 
popular as a motif. The flowers of tho coimtry are sho^vn individually as 
woU as in conventional groupings that go to form intorcstmg motifs (Plato 
XVI, fig. 4). Men in various fighting attitudes and with w^capons of war 
(Plate X, figs. 7-8), as killing tiger (Plate X, fig. 6), acrobats balancing their 
uplifted bodies and attempting difficult feats (Plato IX, fig. 7), and semi- 
divine beings, such as Kinnara with human head and bird’s body and wings 
(Plate Vm, fig. 6), Kinnara with human body and horse-head (to which class 
the horse-headed Tumburu belongs — ^Plato VIII, fig. 8), Gandharva, as a 
celestial musician, playing on damaru (Plato VUE, fig. 7), and Gandharva 
(or perhaps a human being) beating time on a pitcher (p/totto) (Plate IX, fig. 8) 
and Vidyadharas hovering in the sky with garlands in their hands (Plate 
vm, fig. 9) form the subjects treated on a number of terracotta plaques 
recovered from the central mound. Some of the plaques exhibit a character 
similar to that of stone sculpture of the times. Exuberant in conception 
and in the richness of subject-matter, the local artists did not scruple to stoop 
even to sma,!! matters or situations, and no subject appeared to them as too 
small or imworthy of attention. The find of such terracottas here with singular 
























Bronzo votive images of the Buddha in VajrCaana, from Rupbon-mura mound. 

















TERRACOTTA PLAQUES 


1-4. Biuldhist divine beings from Riipbim-nnirii. 

6, PadmiipSni from Aimndnrujo’s pnlnce motin<l. 

0, Buddlm Sakyannmi in bhuaparia from Annndnrujft’s inonnd. 















W-lv 























8 . 


3 . 




1-2. Ornamental bricks from Rupban-murS. 

3-9. Terrocotta plaques from Rnpban-mura. 

10. Terracotta plaque from Bhojaraja’s palace mound. 





AUCHAEOLOatCAIi DISCOVEEIES ALOKG MAINAMATI & LAUMAI BAEGES 226 

subjects carved on them would single out. the structure as one of exceptional 
interest. It was probably a. Buddhist Vihara with the temple or shrine in 
the centre as at Pahaipur. Pottery picked up here were mostly hopelessly 
crushed, as the one figured (PI. m, fig. II) will show. 

r 

ItdkJioVa- (Mound No. 8). 

Two hundred yards to the south of Bhojaraja’s palace is a big mound 
covered by thick vegetation, where quarrying for bricks had been heavy. The 
plan of structure was not discernible, but a few bricks and terracotta plaques 
recovered from here suggest its .date as similar to that of the Anandaraja’s 
palace ruins. 

Riipban-mura (Mound No. 10). ' 

A furlong to the south of Itakhola is a vast site, one-fourth mile square 
in area, locally called Bupban-muxa (Plate XVII, mound 10). Here the 
mound or mounds (at least three can be made out) are very high and 
brick depredation was on a large scale. One, when esq>osed, revealed in its 
centre a cruciform brick structure resembling in plan the central temple of 
Paharpur and of the Nandangarh temple, with re-entrant angles and recessed 
comers richly dressed on the outside with carved plaques and mouldings 
bearing interesting designs (Plate II, fig. c). Purther it was reported to me 
that from this ruin were recovered seven pots containing votive images of the 
Buddha in bronze. Thanks to the efforts of the local officers of the Central 
Public Works Department, twelve images were recovered from the contractors 
and one from a private citizen of Comilla. * They are aU small votive images 
such as Buddhist pilgrims carried on their pilgrimage, and represent Vajra- '' 
■ Sana Bvddha-Bhattdraka with the Vajra clearly shown on the pedestal in 
front and with the Buddhist creed formula embossed on the underside. The 
Buddha’s right hand indicates the bhumisparia-mudra (Plate V, fig. 2), The 
iconographio details and the workmanship of these images are similar to those 
of the inscribed votive bronzes recovered from Jhewari in Chittagong District, 
assignable to the ninth-eleventh centuries A.D. The images are very tiny, 
the maximum height being 2 inches. On one image only the Vajra was not 
indicated, but the creed formula was present in all. Two smaller mounds 
found nearby probably entomb votive stupas. The find of these images as 
well as the subject-matter of the carvings on a majority of the plaques recovered 
from this area at once mark this as a Buddhist establishment, probably 
^ a monastery with arrangement of temples, as at Paharpur, and flanking cells 
as in a Buddhist monastery. Two structures have'been disturbed so far but 
. there are still two or three more unopened. The snsmbls of evidence fttr- 
nished by the terracottas and the images point to ninth-eleventh centuries A.D. 
as the probable date -of this ruin, while the subject-matter of the terracotta 
plaques and the ornamental bricks throws a flood, of light on the lives, behefe 
and emotions of the people of Bengal of those days. 

• 15 • 



226 


B. 0. LAW VOLUMK 


Plaques. 

As at inandaraja’a palaco, a vpry largo number of terracotta plaques 
from the basement of the structure exposed hero reveal scones dra%vn from the 
daily lives of the people, oroations of God and nature in various stages o^ 
movement, equipoise, emotion and oxxjerionco. With simple tools and cheap 
material, such as mud and clay, the local foUc-artlsts have achieved almost 
a marvel in sculptural art. All lives are i-oprosontcd — divine, semi-divine, 
human, animal, bird and flora — ^not to speak of i)opulnr stories and decorative 
patterns, motifs and compositions. The terracotta jAaquos (in Mainamati 
and Lalmai areas) are vidor in size than at Paharpur while the art represented 
on them is of a higher class of cxcollonce, in spite of limitations of material. 
Among the divine, Bodhisattva Vajrapani (Plato "STI, fig. 2), Padraapani 
(Plate VTI, fig. I ), Trailok 3 'avijaya in alulha pose and with the Vajra in one 
of his left hands (Plato VII, fig. 3), and Prince Siddhartha cutting off his locks 
of hair before his renunciation arc popular. Among the semi-divine, Yakshas 
(Plate 'Sni, fig. 4), VidyaAharas (Phato VIII, fig. 9 ; Plato X, fig. 7 ; Plato XI, 
fig. 1 ; Plate XVIII, figs. 8-9), Gandharva as dnimmcr (Plato VIII, fig. 2) with 
an expression of gratification and deep intent in his performance, Kinnara 
in close fitting tunic {kaneJmka) beating time with his hands, and ICimpnnisha 
are noticed. Among the human, warriors with different weapons of war, 
archers, men fighting with tigers, dancing and plajdng on flute (Plato XI, 
fig. 4), women in their toilet or sleeping and cowhordoss chmning milk can be 
noticed. Of special interest are a few subjects which may bo noted in detail. 
A study of irony is attomj)ted in one plaque where a man sitting at ease, 
profusely dressed and decorated, is attempting to learn fighting, lUco Uttara 
in the harem of Virata, which had led him to a ridiculous position of dis- 
proportionate weapons held in wrong hands. The warrior holds a big shield 
in his right hand and a small dagger in his loft (Plate XI, fig. 6). A woman 
sleeping forms the subject of another and this may bo taken to represent Maya, 
Buddha’s mother, dreaming of the wliito elephant that entered her womb. 
On a third plaque a pot-bellied fat man with striped under-garment and 
necklet of beads, recalling Gupta features, is shown seated. A king sitting at 
ease and displaying conspicuously an armlet {aAgada) on his loft arm, a foreigner 
probably a Burman with striped pyjamas, a sword tucked to his waist and 
with head dressed with a turban {ushnislia), such as is seen in Burma today, 
are carved on two interesting plaques. A Patakd-nayika oT standard-bearing 
woman, holding a flag of religious significance and hurrying tow'ards probably 
a shrine, is shown on another plaque (Plato XV, fig. 6). Her dross \vith incised 
circular marks on it reminds us of the modem brocaded female attire. She 
appears to be a foreigner, probably Burmese or Arakanese. A lady with 
patra-hmdalas in her ears and hair arranged elegantly in a top Imot (dhammiUa) 
even.as the modern Burmese lady does, the profile study of a man, and a stout 
lady in a nude condition dancing, form the subject-matter of three more 
plaques wherein human study is refreshingly delineated. 



AROIIAKOLOQICAL DISCOVERIES ALONO MAINAMATl & DALIIAI RANGES 227 

Sorponts from the reptile class, lions, striped antelopes recumbent (Plate 
XIII, figs. 9 and 11), elephants caparisoned (Plate XIV, figs. 1 and 2) and 
with rider (Plate XIV, fig. 3), tigers with their tell-tale stripes, grinning mon- 
keys (Plate Xin, fig. 8), rhinoceros, wild boar, caparisoned bull with tail 
m raised in vigour (Plato XIII, fig. 3) and squirrel on tree-branch afford an 
interesting animal study. Some of the animals are also seen in decorative 
compositions and motifs. Such arc— the Makara (Plate XVI, fig. 2) and 
KtrlwiukJia resembling the Javanese Kala-makara motif (Plate Xin, figs. 4 
and 6 ; Plato XVIII, fig. G). Frontal study of an elephant, such as one finds 
surmountingcapitals with its four legs drami in front in a line and with the trunk ’ 
in thoir centre (Plate XV, fig. 3), the conventional antelope within a foliage 
inset, the lion within a cave formed by fofiage which recalls the Gupta technique 
luioviTi from Samath (Plato XV, fig. 4), addorsed harhsas with bead-necklace 
in thoir beaks, also a symmetric study of Gupta art tradition (Plate XVI, 
fig. 6) and serpent couples {mithuna) intertwined in love around a lotus 
inset ns in South Indian sculpture (Plato XV, fig. 1), and the duel between 
the natural enemies, the mongoose and the serpent (aki-nakula) (Plate XV, 
fig. 2) — all these afford at once a good study of animals and an appreciation 
of animal compositions so as to form decorative patterns and designs. Equally 
interesting are the pilrna-ff/iata motifs, such as one notices in Gupta archi- 
tecture and in ^.i^afika’s coins and inscriptions (Plate VI, figs. 2 and 3), and 
comer brackets with the design of pumpkin offsets (Plate VI, fig. 4). Greek 
vases juxtaposed between foliage, lotus loiobs as in Mahasthan, Bengal,^ 
and full•^^lo^vn lotus between Greek acanthus (Plate XVI, fig. 5) and two 
rows of foliage (Plato XVIII, fig. 5) arc also worth studying here as motifs. 
Lotus and lily among the flora and Jiamsas with bead-necldaces or foliage in 
their beaks (Plato XVIII, figs. 3, 4) and parrots on ant-hills, as at Paharpur, 
among birds (Plato XVI, fig. 7) have had a distinct thematic appeal to the 
local artists. 

Miscellaneous Scenes. 

Of special interest are some miscellaneous scenes. Such are — a monkey 
chief sitting on his haimch, profusely decorated and with the Yajnopamta 
marldng his class, a monkey crawling on all fours in front of a man sitting 
on his haunch (Plate XVIII, fig. 7), a monkey carrying a pot with holes 
recalling the story of the monkey "with the good intention to serve but lacking 
the brain (Plato XIII, fig. 8), a monkey helping another monkey to climb 
a tree and pull down fruits (Plate Xm, fig. 7), Chaliravartm Slandhata' 
(of Mandhatu Jataka) sitting and producing by a wave of his hand a shower 
of coins from the cloud region, a boy pulling out his leg with difficulty from 
the mouth of a reptile (Plate XI, fig. 3), and a tree spirit (Brahma-rakshas) 
with fan--wiso braided hair, patra-kundalas in the ears and necklet of beads 
standing on the branch of a tree (Plate Xn, fig. 1). A naked ascetic with a 


1 A.S.I., A.B., 1930-37, Plate XV. fig. e. 


228 


B. O. IiAW VOLtrJVJE 


fan of palm-leaf under his arm ' shown on a plaque probably rojirosents a 
Jaina ascetic on his charya after dikshd. Yot another plaque illustrates the 
story of the father and the son who to pleaso the world carried the donkey 
between them on a pole in illustration of the moral that one cannot please all 
(Plate XI, fig. 2). 

An excellent group of comer brackets of terracotta material was gathered 
from this mound. The designs presented were stopped pyramids around 
squares, Greek vaSes with fillet bands (Plate VI, fig. 2), pumpkin offsets 
(Plate VI, fig. 4) and piirna-gliata (Plate VI. fig. 3). An interesting collection 
of ornamental bricks, though mostly fragmontaiy, was also gathered. Among 
the ^ psiguR presented on them are — ^lotus rosettes in a row (Plate XVIII, 
fig. 2) and within squares and circles, cyma recta, lotus petals within voluted 
lines and arched bands (Plate XVlil, fig. 1), stopped pyramids, serpent 
hoods, chess-board and scallops in horizontal courses, the last as seen in images 
of tha Buddha of tho Gupta period. Wedge-shaped bricks were also noticed 
here. 

Potsherds of pans, pot-rests and of broad cooking vessels were recovered 
in large numbers. Some of them show incised designs such as lotus petals, 
dentils, herring-bone, zig-zags, chevron and straight lines as in Plato HI, 
figs. 10, 14 and 16. In addition to the bronze votive Buddhas noted already, 
an axe-head, 6' x 1^", heavily corroded, was also recovered. 

Both the quality and the quantity of the finds, the variety of the scenes 
displayed on the plaques and the variegated designs presented on the orna- 
mental bricks, comice brackets and pottery would point to the existence 
from at least the eighth century A.D. of a Buddhist establishment in this 
locality. 

Kotbdri (Mound No. 9). 

To the west of Eupban-mura is Kotbari (Mound No. 9) which is supposed 
to contain the ruins of a fort. The diggings for bricks had, been very heavy 
here resulting in the almost complete dismantling of the stractures. One 
such stracture exposed showed on plan a pyramidal temple with re-entrant 
comers of walls (Plate I, figs. 6 and c), and surrounded by rows of - cells. 
Probably it was also a monastery. The area of the cells appears to be 300 feet 
each way while the central temple which was probably aarvatobhadra in plan 
is about 100 feet each way. Large-sized rectangular bricks, 14" x 9" x 2^", are 
profuse here. A few plaques were also reported from here but, none could be 
recovered. One interesting plaque, however, came from somewhere nearby 
though the man who brought it could only declare it as from Lalmai lull. The 
subject of the plaque is a flying Vidyadhara (Plate VIII, -fig. 1) in the violent 
movement of flight mixed with dance, in which act the garland that he held 
in his hands snaps. The upper cloth, necklet, Tajnopamfa, angadas, brocaded 
under-garment and lotus, boots are noteworthy decorative features presented 
on this plaque which would at once classify it among the best productions of 
the Pala period. 


ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES ALOKG MAHTAMATI & T.AT.htat EAKGES 229 
SSttanraja’s Palace (Mound No. 11). 

About a mile to the south-east of Rupban-mura is Salbanraja’s palace 
ruins which are extensive and fortunately not quarried for bricks. Terracotta 
plaques, one of them representing a ExHimuJiha, comer-brackets with stepped 
pyramid and chess-board designs and potsherds with dentils, herring-bone 
and trellis designs on them were recovered here. Local tradition assigns the 
rain to the period of Queen Mainamari, the mother of Gopichanda. It is 
supposed that in the centre of the ruins is a chapel for the worship of Hadi-pa, 
the Oiiru of Gopichanda and his mother. 

Owing to the richness of the sites and the undoubted importance of the 
discoveries, the preliminary survey started last year is now being continued. 
The results achieved so far is the addition of seven more sites, aU intact, to 
those already noticed. The area surveyed was along the Lalmai hills, and 
the country traversed was about 6 miles to the south of Kotbari, beginning 
from Kotbari (Mound No. 9). 

Hatigara (Mound No. 12). 

To the west of Kotbari (Mound No. 9), and close to it, is the first mound 
in the new series, roughly 150 yards X 150 yards, and about 40 feet high, 

' called Hatigara mound (Plan XVJLl, mound 12), where traces of brick struc- 
tures were visible. As the moimd is intact the nature of the remains cannot 
be determined. 

Ujirpura (Mound No. 13). 

Ujirpura is the name of another extensive mound (Plan XVII, No. 13), 
360 yards X 250 yards, which is a mile to the south-west of Kotbari. The 
remains entombed here are intact. Ordinary bricks of various sizes and pot- 
sherds, some with designs as at Anandaraja’s palace and Bhojaraja’s palace 
mounds, were also noticed, 

Pucca Mura (Mound.No. 14). 

About one mile to the south of Ujirpura mound is a big mound, about 
50 feet high and 300 X 100 yards in extent, from which bricks and potsherds 
as at Ujirpura were picked up. A very high and extensive mound, called 
locally Jammura, lies a mile to the south-east of Pucca Mura and attracts one 
by its height and extent. But neither bricks and potsherds nor any other 
signs of structures were visible on the mound. The mound is apparently of 
Uttle archaeological interest. ' 

Ohilavmra (No. 16). 

Yet another mound, small but promising, and called Ghilamura, was 
noticed 2i miles to the south-east of Salbanraja’s palace (Mound No. 11). 
The area is about 126 x 100 yards. Pottery and bricks are profusely scattered 
as at Rupban-mura. On some potsherds, squares, herring-bone and such 


230 


B. a. JjA\v volume 


designs were noticed incised. A fragment from a stone imago (only the head 
can be made out) was also picked up here, and this suggests that probabl}'^ a 
temple is entombed. 

•Chaudcilchola is the name given to a very high mound situate about a 
Twilft to the south-west of Ghilamura. But nothing of interest was noticed 
on it. Adina and Madina are two other high mounds on a hill, a mile to the 
south-west ijf Jammura. Like Jammura and filiaudriUiola tl)oy are un- 
interesting to the arcliaeologist. Not even ordinary bricks were found there. 
A mosque now crowns the mound called Adina, Yet another high and preten- 
tious mound in this area, without however any archaeological vestiges in it, 
is Rajakhola, IJ miles to the south of Chandrikhola. The name is its only 
attraction. 

Bupbani Mura (Mound No. 16). 

Four miles to the south-east of Pucea Mura and I J miles to the south- 
west of Bajaldiola lies an extensive mound called Rnpbani Mura 400 X 
260 yards, and about 45 feet high. Bricks of various sizes and potsherds 
were visible on the surface. A stream called SuhliacJianir-chara (probably 
Suhhaiarmschara) runs at the foot of the mound and a bath in it is considered 
by the local people as sacred. The mound is intact and is of sufficient 
promise. 

Balagazir Mura (Mound No. 17). 

Balagazir Mura is an extensive (400 X 300 yards) though not high mound, 
3 miles to the south of Ghilamura, as the crow flies, and about a mile to the 
north-west of Lalmai Railway Station. Potsherds and bricks were noticed 
in profusion here as at Ghilamura. It is pleasing to note that the mormd is 
intact. 

CJiaudimura (Mound No. 18). 

To the south-west of Lalmai Railway Station and about 2 miles south- 
east of Rupbani MurS. (Moimd No. 16) is a very high and extensive mound, in 
fact the highest in the area, being 60 feet high and about 500x200 yards in 
extent. This is called Chapdimma, after the name of Chapffi for whom a 
temple is constructed on its top. There is also a temple for l§iva by the side 
of the temple for Chapiffi, and worship of the god and goddess is going on now. 
More than these shrines the archaeologist is attracted by the large number of 
'potsherds and bricks found in the area as at Anandaraja’s and Bhojaraja’s 
palaces and Rupban-mura mounds. Fossil wood abounds in this area. At the 
eastern foot of this mound is a tank from which were recovered some years 
ago two images of black basalt which are now worshipped in the temple of 
Ohandi. One represents Manjuvara, a variety of Manju^ri Bodhisattva and 
an emanation of the five Dhyani Buddhas (Plate XIX, a). All the ioonographio 
details that the Sadhana-mala attribute to Manjuvara are present. The lion 



231 


SOME THOUGHTS ON EDHOATION IN INDIA 

is his vehicle {vahana), the hands indicate dharma'CliaJera-mudra, while the 
left hand holds by its stalk a lotus on which is placed a book, the Prajnapdra- 
mifa scripture. .The five Dhyani Buddhas are shown in miniature in the 
background as also Vidyadliaras hovering above with garlands in their hands 
(and two attendant divinities, probably Jalinikumara or Suryaprabha and 
Chandraprabha, one on either side of him. The place assigned to Manju^ri 
and his variant forms such as Blanjuvara in the Buddhist pantheon is very 
high and he is considered in Mahayana to be one of the greatest Bodhisattvas.^ 
It is easy to recognize in the image the characteristics of Pala art and sculpture. 

The other image repinsonts Suiya with his iconography completely 
delineated in the stele (Plate XIX, b). ‘ Though similar to the Sfirya image firom 
Pakilara near Mainamati described already (Plate IV) and probably also of the 
same period, the developed features of some of the motifs, such as theKtriimuklia 
above in the place of parasol, and Danda with sword in hand instead of club, 
the standing pose of the other eleven Adityas in miniature (in the background) 
and the profile view of the central horse in the group of seven horses that 
constitute Siirya’s chariot, all point to a later phase of Pala art. 

It is hoped that when scientific excavations are possible after war the 
insults so far obtained will be controlled and checked by future stratified data. 


SOME THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION IN INDIA 

By 

Dr. Stama Prasad Mookerjee, M.A., B.L., D.Litt., Bar.-at-Law 

India, like all ancient and civilized countries, has had a long history of 
education. A series of systems spontaneously took their rise in Indian life 
and were maintained in a flourishing condition by the people themselves, to 
be occasionally supported and organized by the State. India developed some 
noteworthy systems of education in different ages and different areas. The 
importance of education in civilized life was fully realized but there was 
hardly any theory of education. This theorizing, it must be remembered, 
is essentially a modem business; like grammarians and commentators, theory 
comes only after certain systems have already been in vogue. Sometimes in 
the modem age we find theorists propounding ideal systems of education like 
philologists concocting artificial languages such as Volapuk and Esporanto. 
In ancient times, however, there was no scope for theorizing but the instinct 
of the ancient Indian educationist was sound enough and through the inter- 
action of the time-spirit and the economic milim India, 'like her peers— China, 
Greece and the rest,— built up her individual system of education, of which we 
have some definite knowledge firom at least 1000 B.O. onwards. 

1 B. BhattacJjoryo, T/ie Buddhist Iconography, pp. 16-17, 24-26; Plates XV— b, c, d, 
XVI— o. • • 



232 


B. 0. I/AW VOIiTTME 


The riddle of Mahenjodaxo and Harappa. stiH lies unsolved and conse- 
quently we have no knowledge of the kind of education which Indians in the 
civilized city-states of the fourth and third millennia were receiving; but some 
traditional system of education may be presumed from the elaborate system 
of writing such as we see in the undeciphered seals. 1 

Then we have the Aryan system which developed on the soil of India 
after the Vedic Aryans had established themselves in Northern India; and 
we get plenty of glimpses of the Aryan system in the Brahmams, Upanishads 
and Qrhya Sutra texts. This was the age of the hermitage schools {guru- 
kvJas or airamjas), which were fully developed at least some centuries before 
the Buddha, and the spirit of which has .even now persisted, although under 
quite different cultural and economic conditions, in the old-fashioned 
Brahmanical Sanskrit schools. Even in the present age we note a good deal 
of revivalistic attempts at getting back the old inspiration of these schools and 
something of their atmosphere or spirit in modem institutions like the 
Aryasamaj Gurukul, the Sanatan Dharma Bishikula and the Santiniketan 
School. I need not discuss at length the merits and deficiencies of this Vedic or 
ancient Brahman system. It was, to start with, an exclusive system, catering 
only for the weU-bom boys of the proud Aryan castes — ^the twide-bom 
Brahmans, Kshatriyas and Vai^yas. Trae, here and there a liberal master like 
Gautama-Haridrumata may have accepted a boy like Satyakama Javala of 
unknown paternity; but the system was, as a rule, closed to the 6fidra. We 
need not however be indignant over this exclusiveness. One has to recall that 
the education dealt with the language, religion and culture of a people which 
were still alien to the mass of the non-Aryan speaking peoples of the coimtry, 
forming the ranks of the Sudras in Indian Society of the -day. Yet, later on, 
with the Aryanization of the Sudras, we find the door of education not entirely 
closed to them although Aryan or Vedic lore remained the exclusive property 
of the twice-bom. A good many non-Aryans were admitted into the Aryan 
fold by the back-door, and were even transformed into Brahmans, Kshatriyas 
and Vaisyas when there was en masse assimilation of these by entire tribes 
within an Aryan-speaking Brahmanical community. 

This old Brahmanical system of education had a feature to which modem 
theorists and experimenters are giving their enthusiastic support — ^it was an 
education entirely in the open. There was not much book-learning as books 
were yet to come; but there was the living transmission of sacred lore by 
word of mouth’, it was all gurnmuhhi vidya in both ancient texts and in legends 
as als’o in thought and observation (that is philosophy and such branches of 
science as existed in those days). The memory was disciplined as entire 
series of texts had to be got by heart; reasoning and powers of observation 
were also to be cultivated. All this went on with a thorough participation 
into the labour and relaxation of daily life ; the boys were to be active members 
of a priestly community, living on the outskirts of the forest-— they were, in 
a way, pioneers of the Aryan type of civilization in ancient Tndin. when the 
Arj’^ans were spreading. The boys had to go into the forest to fetch fire-wood 



SOMK TnOTJQHTS ON EDUCATION IN INDIA 233 

for sacrifice and for cooking. They had to tend tho cows of the community 
and look after primitive agriculture along with their teachers and their servants. 
Above all, through their close contact with nature they were expected to 
develop their powers, and build their character. Their daily routine was 
heavy— a round of early rising, cold bath and tending the fire and endless 
repetition and assimilation of tho sacred texts. Hard life this indeed, but the 
boys emerged from tliis discipline which extended theoretically fi-om their 
8th year to their 24th as in tho case of Brahmans as leaders in both thought 
and action of a groat community, a community that was shaping the destinies 
of humanity not only in India but also over a great part of Asia, and in the 
realm of tho ideas it was a community which was of deep significance to the 
whole world. 

Those schools in tho open are once again in vogue in the west, whether 
in Germanjf or Franco or in America or in Russia, such experiments always 
command rcspectfulty sjunpathotic interest. In any national system of 
education which wo may build up in the future wo cannot afford to neglect 
this ancient heritage of ours, the Airama schools of the ^sMs. We should 
only remember that it was within the atmosphere of this system that the 
deathless Upanishads came into being in ancient India. 

As cities grow into importance these ‘forest schools’ became a thin g of 
tho past, but tho sjJirit was kept up by tho Brahmans in what may be caDed 
‘homo schools’. They continued to teach their ancient Vedic lore to select 
groups of boys of their own community, tho master housing the boys and 
feeding' them with his own family and finding most of their expense. In this 
work tho entire people — ^from the ruler onwards — supported the teachers by 
giving them dalishinaft or honoraria for their religious ministrations, for their 
opinions on matters of conduct and conscience, and by presents of other 
sorts, including landed property to maintain their schools. Later on, when 
tho vogue for temples came in, those endowments of lands to Brahmans for 
maintaining temples and connected schools became a noteworthy feature in 
Indian life. As a result of this wo have from post-Clnistian times the system 
of templo-scliools, a fixed percentage of tho income arising out of attached 
temple lands or from gifts made to the temple being set apart to maintain one 
or more Brahman teacher and a number of pupils. These private Brahmanical 
schools and temple-schools are living traditions oven at tho present day although 
these are no longer able to keep pace with our ‘progressive’ ideas. 

Another kind of educational institution developed, also out of the ancient 
forest schools, when during the middle of the first milleimium B.C. big institu- 
tions were coming to be set up in the more important cities where eminent 
teachers were congregating and were attracting hundreds of pupils in various 
arts and sciences. Conspicuous among such institutions were • those at 
TakshaSila and at Benares and, doubtless also, in other important towns. 
Wo do not Imow about their detailed organization and the nature of their 
work, but presumably there must have been some amount of State support. 



234 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


whether from the ruling king or from the ruling aristocracy, if the State was 
a republic. 

The later Buddhistic universities were just an extension of these large 
educational institutions, and in the development of the Vedic idea the cos- 
mopolitan Court and Capital of Kapishlca in North-Western India had evidently : 
a great deal to do. When Buddhism and Brahmanism spread in Central 
Asia and China and in the lands of greater India (South-Eastern Asia and 
Indonesia) it was inevitable that Central Asians, Chinese and Tibetans and 
people from Burma and Indo-China and the islands would like to study 
religion and culture at the fountainhead in the mother country itself. 
Consequently, from early centuries of the Christian era right down to the 
Turk! conquest of Northern India and the temporary dislocation of Indian 
cultural life, pilgrim scholars from Central Asia, China and elsewhere used to 
come to India and they found these centres of learning, which were veritable 
large-scale universities, ready for them. The description of Nalanda left by 
Hiuen Tsang and others will make any Indian proud of the organization of 
learning that had come into being in India at least iifreen hundred years ago. 

In the south, as we know from inscriptions of the Chola and other 
dynasties, education was equally well-organized, centring round the temples, 
which were the mdst natural seats of culture in a community with an essentially 
religio-philosophical outlook. 

The Hindu educational systems, therefore, in their spirit and organization, 
in both their simplicity and their elaboration, formed a worthy predecessor 
of the modem systems which have grown in om own times. The open air 
as well as vocational tradition behind the hermitage schools had been noted 
before, and this is a great heritage we have never abandoned — in both our 
Sanskrit schools {tols) and our humble village {pathaialas). 

After the Turki conquest and the establishment of Moslem rule in India, 
the great Arabic and Persian learning of the new faith found a congenial 
home in India. The first Muhammadan King of Delhi, Qutb-ud-din Aibak, 
built a great mosque and minar or column at Delhi forming the oldest and 
one of the grandest monuments of Islam in our country. There was also a 
school attached to the mosque. As in the Arab lands and Iran, the mosque 
became a centre of higher culture and education. In Bengal the first Moslem 
school of which we have any record was the Madrasa founded in 1313 A.D. 
at Tnbeioi by a Moslem warrior Zafar Khan who, according to tradition, so 
far Indianized himself as to have even composed, in Sanskrit, a hymn in 
honour of the goddess Gahga which as Daraph Khan’s hymn is still repeated 
by thousands of devoted orthodox Hindus. These Madrasas and schools 
attached to mosques, which grew in number with the growth of centuries, 
were meant mostly for young Moslems wishing to take up religion as a pro- 
fession. In the early centuries of Islam in India, there could not grow up a 
reputed seat of Islamic learning like the Colleges at Baghdad or the Al-Azhar 
at Cairo but nevertheless, with the lavish patronage of most of the Indian 
Moslem States, eminent Moslem scholars from outside — -particifiarly Iran — 


SOME THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION IN INDIA 


235 


found it worth their while to come to India and help in creating a tradition of 
Islamic scholarship in the country. Although no great institution like the 
Nizamiya College was founded by any Moslem patron of learning, yet at 
Lahore and Delhi, at Jaunpur and Golconda, at Bijapur and Gaur and else- 

'^wrhere, and later, at Lucknow and Patna, Hyderabad and Murshidabad — in 
fact wherever tfliere was a Moslem aristocracy or a strong Moslem community — 
centres of Arabian and Persian learning grew up. 

For the average Hindu who would be out of place in a mosque school, a 
system of Persian education was gradually developed mainly at the instance 
of the Hindus themselves. The Hindu was too cultmred to ignore a new 
system of learning which was imposed upon his country. Moreover, he was 
practical enough not to neglect the cultivation of the new ofScial language — 
Persian — ^which opened to him the avenue to employment in the Moslem State. 
So, around an Ustad, who was either a Moslem -Mulla or a Hindu Munshi, 
developed all over Northern India a system of Maktabs outside the mosques, 
to which Hindus and Moslems alike would go for a secular education, mainly 
in the Persian language and literature. Many of these secular schools were 
maintained in the residence of some local magnate, Hindu or Moslem. He' 
would pay the salary of the Ustad, primarily for his own sons, but incidentally 
for all likely young men in the neighbourhood as well, who usually got their 
training free. It was an extension of the old indigenous PaffiaMla system, the 
bulk of the teachers’ income being foimd by one or more well-to-do individuals 
of the locality. 

This new Islamic learning was making some headway in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries and already "we find a mild protest against a Persian traming 
denationalizing the Hindus. In Jayananda’s GJiaifanya Mangal (middle of the 
sixteenth century) we read that among the evils of the Kali age are the 
follo'wing: Brahmans will read Persian, wear a beard, recite Persian verses 
and move out -with a stick. But the Hindu commimity got over this exclusive 
attitude and in the eighteenth century we have evidence of Persian being 
immensely popular, though mainly as a bread-and-butter subject. This 
Persian training was not entirely barren of result in India. Lea'ving aside 
the modem "writers of Persian in India whose name is legion, and to whom 
Persian was largely a cultural inheritance, we have a great many Hindus 
also excelling in both prose and poetry in Persian, including the great Bam 
Mohan Bay. Like Indian contribution to English literature, this has its- 
significance in the cultural life of the country and its history still remams to 
be told. 

. The two systems — Sanslnrit or Hindu, and Persian — ^Arabic or Moslem 
although agreeing in their basic pattern, unfortunately could not come to 
any constructive rapprochement so far as the ordinary Hindu and Moslem were 
concerned. Of course, in the Court of Akbar and in the parlour of Dara 
Sikoh maulavis and mullas with their Persian and Arabic learning and Pawdits 
with their Sanskrit collaborated in translating a good many Sanskrit books 
into Persian. A Jai Singh of Jaipur during the first half of the eighteenth 


236 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


centuiy translated Arabic astronomical treatises into Sanskrit and viC6 versa. 
And here and there a Moslem writer of Hindi or Bengali treated a Persian ,or 
Islamic theme in his mother tongue. But so far as the people in general are 
concerned, the two systems of intellectual culture unfortunately remained for 
the most part sealed books to each other. Through the medium of English^ 
and the Vernaculars we may now form a bridge over the gulf that has divided 
Perso-Arabic learning from Sanskrit. There should be a general movement to 
rectify the mutual exclusiveness of the Pandit uud Maulavi or the ^asM 
and the MuUa. The best thought of Persian and Arabic literature should be 
made available to Hindu youth and similarly the best thought of Sanskrit 
and Pali to the Moslem youth, Purther, their interest in and study of the 
complementary culture should be encouraged in all possible ways. 

Jn Europe mediaeval system of Christian education through Latin similarly 
developed around their cathedrals and in their, monasteries. It is thus a 
European variation of our mediaeval Sanskrit schools that had grown up around 
the temples in our holy places — ^Nadia, Benares, Conjeevaram, Nasik, Dwarka, 
and Hardwar. These mediaeval, universities of Europe were slowly and 
most naturally modernized by the introduction of ‘natural philosophy’ or 
experimental science in addition to the Trivium and Quadrivium which 
formed the earlier curricula. By the time the English were established 
in India, education in Europe had entered its modem phase. Its outlook 
was more pragmatic, experimental and materialistic. • The advantages of such 
an education were at once patent in European life with its orientation towards 
science that was now rapidly advancing. But things were different in this 
coimtry. Indian life, ignorant and afraid of the new existence, was wistfully 
looking back to a glorious past that was gone for ever. The contrast between 
Europe and India in this respect is very great. It was a great pity that our 
Indian Sanskrit and Perso-Arabic schools in the temples and mosques and 
elsewhere could not also be modernized. 

Science as a part of general learning came from Europe, and it came 
at first as an exotic plant, for which the hot-house of univemities, teaching 
through English and organized mainly on Western pattern, was perhaps 
inevitable. But this exotic plant has taken root; science has become’ 
naturalized in India in accordance with the needs of the modem age. It is 
time it were brought out of the hot-hou^e of its English medium into the open 
air of training through the Indian languages. That is one piece of urgent 
reform which in national interest brooks no delay. 

Our new education must enable us to know ourselves to the fullest — 
our greatnesses and our deficiencies. There ought to be greater stress put on ^ 
the necessity of umversities helping our young men. to understand the genuine 
needs of the country — not in a spirit of mere academic detachment but with 
the idea of being really serviceable to the great inarticulate masses to whom 
they, as intellectuals, more than any other community, have an undoubted 
responsibility. It is not enough for our universities merely 'to give our 
young men a sound cultural or technical education and send them out into the 



TAKSA-SUTKA 


237 


world with badges of efficient study of some science or art conducted in a 
detached spirit. Something more is needed. Time has come when greater 
attention should be, paid towards making these young men really useffil to 
the country at large. Indian education must be nourished by the fundamental 
,^‘onceptions of Indian life and genius ; it must be based on a proper synthesis 
of the best that the Sast and the West can contribute. Never has been felt, 

• more than in India of today, the supreme necessity of training, by our univer- 
sities, in social and rural welfare — covering geography, agriculture, co-operation, 
industries, village economy, public health and other allied subjects of vital 
importance which go to the root of our national existence. What, indeed, 
could be a more effective eye-opener than the present political and economic 
debacle with its incidents of communalism, ministerial crisis, its profiteering, 
its admimstrative graft and jobbery, its evacuations, its ‘military needs’ and 
finally, the catastrophe of the present man-made famine coming as a sort of 
a>up de grace of the act of God in the shape of floods and ojclones ? AI! tT??*? 
points to the necessity of turning out a generation of young men made of a 
sterner stuff — ^men who would combine in themselves character and efficiency, 
service and sacrifice, idealism and' practical wisdom and, above all, bold self- 
confidence and unfailing faith in the Almighty. 


TAKSA-SUTRA 

(SOIBNOB OB CaEPBUTRY) 

By 

tiAHSMAHOPSDHYSYA Db. UmBSHA SIiSHBA, M.A., D.LiTT., KAVYATIeTHA, 

University of AUahabad 

The great thinkers and seers of the. past have not only thought over all 
he aspects of om life and have actually visualized them with their own clear 
nsight but have also left behind them the true records of their mature 
ixperiences in the form of various Nostras. We know from the Ohdndogya 
Jpanisad (vii. 1. 2) and similar other sources of the various ancient sciences of 
)ur country, some of which are almost extinct and perhaps lost for ever and 
ire now Imown to us only by their names. Ode of these forgotten sciences is 
ihe Science of Carpentry {Taksa^astra). 

It is a fact that it is one of the living sciences which guides the activities 
)f our eveoyday life and yet we do not know anything about its existence, 
[t was only in course of my studies on technical subjects that I came across 
:ertain references from which I conclude that there was at least some sutra- 
vork on the Science of Carpentry. 

This science is meant for the construction of houses and household pro- 
perties including carts, 1 ploughs and' other implements with the help of- wood 


1 A Tahsan is distinct from a Rathdkara. Vide Tajurveda Sarnhita, XVI, 27. 



238 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


and bamboos wbete the assistance of a carpenter is indispoMable, Not only 
for the secular purposes the science is very useful but also for the sacrificial 
needs. Even today we find that both for the performance of imwUi and 
smdrUi rites we require the help of this science for the construction of the 
various ritualistic implements. 

It is very difficult to say anything about the authorslup of this Talcsa- 
sHtra, but it may be suggested that Taksan or Taksaka, the architect of the 
gods, might have been very closely connected with this science. Nor are we 
able to say an 3 dihing about the scope and the contents of this science. Our 
knowledge of the topics connected with this branch of learning at present is 
either limited to the traditions preserved amongst tho grliasthas of the villages 
who construct their houses and make their household articles with wood and 
bamboos and also have to get their sacrificial implements made with the 
help of a carpenter or to certain scattered references found in the irauid and 
grhya iutras. But in no case these references help us to conclude that there 
was any sutra work on this science. No trace of this science or of any work 
on it could be found even in the SamaraAganas^tradhara of Bhoja. 

However, in course of my studios I have found tho following references 
which later writers have called Tah&a-autras, and with a hope that some day or 
other these references may give a clue to unearth tho lost science, I place my 
information before the scholars. 

1. Are, {are ?) ^ blmgrte indrabahurbaddhavgali — Meaning — ^when the spoke 
breaks ivdrabdJm * should be tied. 

2. Pdyaswm m bliojayiUivyah — ^Meaning — as an expiation for the failure 
of the functioning of tho spoke a Brahmaua should be fed on rice cooked in 
milk. 

3. AluuTcikarn, lauJdke ndngam — ^Meaning — that which is meant for .non- 
worldly purposes cannot form part of mundane needs. 

These are the only three sUtras 8 which I have foimd so far. Of these, 
again, I am not quite sure about the second; for I have not got any direct 
support* as to its being a siitra from any source. But as it occurs in the 
same context along with the first with which it. is also connected I have put it 
here along with the two sutraa. 


1 In the ^gveda (I, 32. 15; I, 141. 9; V, 13. 0; y, 68. 6; m, 20. 14; lOT, 77. 3; X, 78. 4) 
tho word is Ara, while in other texts it is Ara. (Vide Tattvaevntamai),i, Pratyaksa, MengalavSda, 
p. 27, Bibliotheca edition.) 

® This word has been explained by Mathuranatha Bhattucurya in his Sahaaya on the 
Tattmeintdmav-i as 'LauhaJeSkay. 

® Vide TtUlvacintama'oi, pp. 27-28 and almost all tho commentators on it; Sitbara-Bhasyo ^ 
on the JIdimdmsasutra, VI. 2. 17 along xvith almost all the later writors on tho above sQtra.^ 

* While commenting on the MimdthsSsfara, VI. 2. 17, iSabara says— 



KAaiPILYA 

By 

Db. IvAMTA Pbosad Jain, D.L., M.R.A.S. 

Kampilya was- tlio capital of Southern Panoala. From the time of the 
Jataka and the Mahabhurata Pailcala became permanently divided into two 
well-defined kmgdoms, viz. Daksina Pailcala with Kampilya as its capital' 
and Uttara Paficfila with Ahicchatra as its principal town. The name of 
Kampilya (Pali Kampilla, Vcdic Kampila) is not as old as Ahicchatra. Kampfla 
appears to have been mentioned in the Yajmweda Samhita which, applies the 
epithet ‘Kiimpilavasini’ to a woman who was perhaps the Idng’s chief queen, 
the Kampila of the ciiithet obviously standing for the town of that name, the 
Kampilya of later literature.^ The exact interpretation of this passage is 
very uncertain. Weber and Zimmer consider Kampila as the name of the 
town Itnoun as Kampilya in later literature and the capital of Pancala in 
MadhyadeSa. 

Cunningham identifies Kampilya "with Kampil on the old Ganges between 
Budaon and Farokhabad.® According to N. L. Day it was situated at a 
distance of 28 miles north-cast of Fatgarh in the Farolchabad district.^ South 
Pancala included the upjoer half of the Doab between the Ganges and the 
Jumnii.* The point which is in favour of Cunningham’s identification is that 
the Jaina Vmdhntirthakalpa definitely locates it on the Ganges.® It is situated 
on the old Ganges and is only 6 miles distant from the railway station of 
Kaimganj (B.B. & C.I. Rly.). There was a higlily artistic tunnel {ummagga, 
i.e, sudaiiga) dug out from the Ganges to the royal palace at Blampilya.® 

Kampilya was an ancient city of India. According to the Adikanda 
of the Ramayana (sarga 33) king Brahmadatta used to live in this_ city. 
The Mahabhurata informs us that Kampilya was the scene of the svayamhara 
of Drupada’s daughter, Krana or Draupadi, who became the wife of the five 
sons of Pandu. Druxiada’s palace is pointed out as the most easterly of the 
isolated mounds on the banljs of the Burgafiga.^ The Visnupurana (chap. 2) 

1 Vcdic Index, i, 149. * 

s Ancient Geography, p. SCO; UvSaagadaeSo, ii, 100. 

* Geographical Dictionary, p. 33. 

* Ciinningbom, Coina of Ancient India, p. 79. 

c Jataka, II, 329 foil. According to tho Mahaummagga Jataka, the mouth of the greater 
tunnel 'tvas upon, tho hank hf tho Ganges. Tho greater tunnel was dug by 60,000 warriors and 
tho lessor tunnel was dug by 700 men. Tho ontranco into tho greater tunnel was provided with 
n door 18 hands high, flttcd with machinery, so that ono peg being pressed, all were closed up. 
Tho tunnel wos built up ivith bricks nnd worked with stucco, it was roofed over with planks and 
besmeared with cement and whitened. In all there wore 80 great doors ond 64 small doors. 
There wore some •hundreds of lomp-colls. On either side there were mnny chambers. Clever 
painters mode nil kinds of paintings in tho tunnel. Tho timnel was well adorned and it looked 
like tho moto-hnll of tho gods (Sudliamma). 

® p.' fiO; cf. Mahabhurata, I, 138, 73; 

Makandim-atha Gangayas-iire janapadayntarn 1 
So 'dhyavasad dlnamanSh Kampilyail-ca purotlamam || 

7 Mahabhurata, Adiporva, Chap. 94, pp. 181-82. 


\ 




240 


B. 0. LAW VOliTTME 


and the Bhagavatapnrana (chap. 22) point out that Kampilya, son of king 
Harya^va, was celebrated as Pancala. Among the hundred sons of Nipa of 
the Ajanuda dynasty Samara is mentioned as the king of Kampilya.i Accord- 
ing to the Jaina Mahapurapa, the country of Pancala was- created by Indra, 
and Bisabha, the first Tirthankara, came and preached his religion there.® ^ 
Of the five sons of Bahya^va, one was named Kampilya and the town came 
to be kno-wn after him. (Bhagavata, 25, 32-S3.) 

Panini refers to Kampilya as an ancient city of India.® It was the 
place which was hallowed by these five auspicious, incidents in the life of 
Vimalanatha, the 13th Tirthafikara who was a son of king Kirtavarman by his 
queen Somade-vi: the descent, the nativity, the coronation, the initiation and ' 
the Jinahood from which circumstance the city came also to be known by the 
name of Panca-Kalyanaka. 

Kampilya is claimed as a city where Arsamitra, the disciple of Kaun^ya, 
who in his turn was the disciple of the Mahagiri teachers of the Lalrsmihara 
Caitya of Mithila, came to reside two hundred and twenty years after the 
demise of Maha-vira. The same city is claimed as the place where the Jaina 
saint Gardabhali renounced the world and attained liberation. It is also 
claimed as a place where prince Gagall, who afterwards became the king of 
Prsti-campa, was converted to Jainism by Gautama. The TSrthakalpa also 
claims it as the place of which the powerful king, Durmukha^ became a 
Pratyeka-Buddha. Kampilya was known as the city of which the king . 
Dharmaruci was able to carry his whole army to Kasi through the air by 
virtue of his piety, when the Lord of Kasi picked up a quarrel with him for 
the alleged fault of ha-ving honoured an image of the Jinendra.^ 

It is believed that the renowned astronomer 6ri Varahamihira was bom 
at Kampilya which was also the birth-place of Ka-vi Caturbhuja Mifra who was 
the celebrated author of the Bhavacintamapi, a commentary on the Amaru- 
4ataka.® 

Jaina literature mentions Kampilya as an excellent city and it has been 
compared -with the celestial city known as Amaravati. It was very beautiful 
and free from defects. It was a very rich town, full of gold.® Many rich 
people used to live there, ^resthi Pinyaka Gandha, a leading merchant of 
Kampilya, had an immense wealth.^ Konda Koliya, who was a disciple of 
Ifrthahkara Maha^nra and who paid homage to him when he -visited Kampilya, 
was a rich and learned man.® Once Sresthl Bhavada of Kampilya lost aU his 
merchandise while on sea; but he afterwards made a good fortune at Taxila. 
He spent la-vdshly in building many Jain temples at Satrunjaya Tirtha.® 


» Fi?i»wp«ra50, IV, p. 19. 

^ Jinnsenacarya, Mahapuravia, Indore -Ed., pp. 668 and 981. 

* Panini, Kasikavrtti, 4, 2, 121. * 

® Gode, Tht, Adyar Library Bulletin, pp. 69-74. 

® Har^c^, Kathako§a, Nos. 116 and 104. 

KathShosa, 104. 8 

* Sbirnfiyoya-jndftd/wya. 


Vividkatirthakalpa, p. 60. 


VvSsagadasao, 6. 




KSMPHiTA 


241 


. The kings of !Ka.inpilya were famous for their wealth, prowess, bravery, 
piety and justice. £ing Harisepa was so powerful that he conquered the six 
continents of the world and spent much for religious and charitable purposes.^ 

When Tirthanlcara ^Isabha and Vahubali renounced the world, Trin gg of 
H(Kampilya accompanied them and took the vows of a kamana? The ladies of 
Kampilya were equally famous for their beauty and morality. ‘R'ing Jaya of 
KamplLya had a beautiful daughter named Madanmahjaii by his queen 
Gunamala. He had a curious crown which king Pajjota of Ujjain wanted to 
have from him but he refused it. Pajjota got angry and attacked Kampilya, 
but he was defeated and taken prisoner. He afterwards won the heart of 
Madanmanjari and married her. Kin g Jaya became a Jaina iramana and 
practised severe penances. Later he attaiued Nirvana.® Pratyeka Buddha 
Sambhuta, who flourished at Kampilya, was a great philosopher and religious 
preacher.* 

Pinyakagandha,® Kadarapihga ® and king Bhima ’ who belonged to 
Kampilya are mentioned in the Jaiaa texts as persons of bad character. 

Kampilya was a sacred place of the Jainas. Ati^aya Tirtha was the 
birthplace and tapobhumi of Sii Vrmalanatha, the 13th Tirthahkara. Vimala,. 
son of Krtavarman, renounced the world and practised penances at Salm^amra- 
vana, which was situated close to the town of Kampilya.® He afterwards 
attained Perfect Knowledge {Kevalajndna). 

^ King Siinhadhva ja and his queen Vapra were devout Jains, but the king had 

another consort named Laksami, who had faith in the Vedas and Brahma:qas. 
Queen Vapra used to celebrate the Jaina festival of A§tanihJca by taking out a 
Rafhayatrd. Laksami induced the king to stop it. Vapra was very sorry on 
account of this. Her son Harisena was afterwards successful in making the 
Bathayatra celebrated with great pomp.® Even to this day this is an annual 
Jaina function at Kampila, although there are no Jains there. The Jainas 
of adjoining towns of Mainpuri, Farrukhabad and Kaimganj bring their 
Rathas and celebrate the festival. 

■ Ori the northern side of the town, just on the bank of old Ganges, is situated 
the temple of BameSvara. In it there are many underground ceUs where 
. once the yogis lived. It is also known by the name of ‘Siddhapitha’. One 
Kavi Tosanidhi lived in it and a 'Doha’ composition of his is preserved on the 
eastern wall of the temple. It runs as follows : — 

‘Tanika na laye vera suni Drupada suta ki deva | 

EAisi kana rui dai, dai hamarl vera I| 

Besides Kavi Tosa some other yogis and Kavis are said to have lived 
^ in this temple. 


1 Har4ena, Kathahosa, 33. - Harivamiapururfa, 18, 160. 

3 Meyer, Hindu Tales, p. 140. * Vttaradhyayanasutra, 13. 

6 Harisena, Kafhakosa, 104. « Harisena, Kathakofa, 82. 

7 Bhagavati-dradhanah, Harisepa, KathSkosa, 116. « Harivamiapurapa, sarga 60. 

3 Harisepa^ Kathakosa, 33. 

i6 


242 


B. 0. LAW VOIilTME 


aose to the EameSvara Temple is the Kapila Kuti whicK is said to be 
the place where Kapila Rsi performed penances. ■ Near it there is the Dranpadi 
Kun^. To the south of Kapila Kuti is the famous temple of Kale^vara. 
Many broken images of Matsya, Caturbhuja and other Jain ^I^rthankaras are 
found there. 

There are two Jaina temples at present existing at Kampil, one 
Digambara and the other ^vetambara. The Digambara temple is a very old 
building— the oldest portion of it is now buried under the ground, wliich 
once contained the Gararmpadulcds. It seems that the present temple was 
built on the site of the old temple during the early mediaeval period. There 
are about a dozen images of the Jinas, only two of them bear no inscription, 
and seem to belong to early years of the -Christian era. The inscriptions 
found on the pedestal of the ten images may be read thus : — 

1. Vimala: Vik. Sam. 1122. 

2. MaMiHra: ‘Samvat 1211 Jetha sudi dasami Sahu .... tasya putra 

Salidatta Bharya Dosa pranamanti.’ 

3. Gandraprabha: ‘Samvat 1440 Varse VaiSakha sudi tija Sri Mula- 

samgha Bhattarakaji.’ 

4. Parha: ‘Samvat 1479 Varse VaiSalcha sudi 10 chandravasare ^ri 

Mulasamgha.’ 

5. Parha: ‘Satnvat 1622 VaiSakha sudi 3 . . . .’ 

6. P§abha'. ‘Samvat 1646 Varse VaiSakha sudi 10 chandra dine Sri 

Mulasamgha Sarasvati gachche BalStakara-gane kundakundan- 
vaye Bhattaraka Sri Jinachandradeva Barabiya-lculodbhavo sa 
Lakhe bh§.rya kusuma tayo putra sahu Mun .... tesam madhye. 
Sahu Arjuna tasa bharya Madatana Arjimanedam fidipurusa- 
bimba satpujya tirtha karapita.’ 

7. Aralianta: ‘Samvat 1649 varse VaiSalsha sudi 3 Mulasamghe 

Bhat^raka Jinachandra Achhapura Palivala Vinda pranamata.’ 

8. Pariva\ ‘Samvat 1957 VaiSakha l^a§pa 2 chandravasare Digambara 

Muni Kundakunda charanopadeSat Bhogamanagare Darbari Lai 
Banarsi Dasa pratisthapitain.’ 

9. Virml/i\ ‘Samvat 1960 VaiSakha krasna 2 Suvarnaprasta-nagare 6ri 

Mum Kundakunda gurupadeSat Palivala idain bimba Vimala 
natha.’ 

The ^vetambara temple, which is one of the best specimens of Indian 
architecture, is of later origin. It was built in Samvat 1904 Vikrama and its 
. main shrine contains four marble images of the Tirthahkaras with precious 
stones on them. 

We invite the attention of the archaeologists to many mounds, scattered 
images and old temples at modem Kampil, which require close examination. 


i6b 



WOMEN IN TEE EARLY INSCRIPTIONS OF BENGAL 

Ry 

Me. Tapo Nath Chakbabaety, M.A. 

It is not possible witb the scanty and meagre data furnished by the 
inscriptions of Bengal to give a complete picture, fair in aU its details, of the 
life of women in Biindu society in Bengal during a period of more than seven 
hundred and fifty years beginning from the year 113 of the Gupta era, that 
is to say, 432-33 A.D., the date of the Dhanaidaha copper-plate inscription of 
Rumaragupta I, or earlier still from the fourth century A.D., the date, according 
to H. P, Sastri [Ep. Ind., Vol. XIII, p. 133], of the Susunia Rock inscription 
of Chandravarmman, and ending with the Muslim invasion of Bengal in or 
about 1200 A.D. The information supplied by these inscriptions scattered 
over a period of nearly eight hundred years are no doubt of great interest and 
authenticity for the reconstruction of the social and religious history of the 
Province before the establishment of Muslim rule. But they suffer from the 
fact of being scrappy and disconnected. Consequently a large space is left 
for our simple guess work or imagination. An attempt has been made in the 
following pages to put together some of these isolated and piecemeal threads 
of information about women drawn from the field of epigraphy. The epigraphic 
materials are sometimes supplemented by a few additional and interesting 
side-lights thrown by contemporary or subsequent literature. The geographical 
boimdaiy of modem Bengal does not seem to have been the same in all ages. 
Its political boundary, as it appears from these inscriptions, seems not unoften 
to have comprised portions of modem Behar and Assam ; for we find reference 
to larger administrative units like Dandabhukti, Srmagarabhukti, Tirabhukti 
and Pragjyotishabhukti. A few parallels or analogous informations drawn 
from the contemporary inscriptions of Assam have therefore been introduced 
in the course of this survey. The broad period of nearly eight centuries over 
which the inscriptions are spread is taken as a whole and in drawing inferences 
it has not been possible to follow a strictly chronological order. 

It may be pointed out in the beginning that many of the traditional 
ideas and institutions among orthodox women in modem Hindu society in 
Bengal, most of the social practices and customs among our womenfolk which 
we caU the paraphernalia of a bygone age, are alike found in previous Hindu 
society in Bengal along with instances of present-day practices like inter-caste 
marriage. The most conspicuous example of a union of the latter type is 
famished by an inscription of the middle of the seventh century A.D., viz. 
the Tipperah copper-plate grant of King Lokanatha. King Lokanatha of 
this record seems to have been a feudatory chief and this inscription, according 
to R. G. Basak, belongs to the period of anarchy and confusion in Bengal 
which followed the death of emperor Harshavarddhana and continued up to 
the time of the establishment of royal authority by Gopala I, the founder of the 
Pala dynasty in Bengal [Ep. Ind., Vol. XY, pp. 301ff.]. King Lokanatha is 
spoken of ui'Yerse 9 of this record as a ‘Karana’, i.e. the member of a mixed 



244 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


caste according to Manu. The verse in question has been rendered as follows: 

* Thus reflecting King Jivadharana relinquished battle and gave away to that 
Kara^a (i.e. Lokanatha) who obtained a royal charter (patta) his o-svn territories 
(vishaya) along with his army.’ [IbiA., pp. 306ff.] In one of the Karidpur or 
Ghagrahati copper-plate grants a caste-namo, Karanika, is mentioned (line 16)^ 
As to the date of this inscription it may he pointed out that one of these 
grants is dated in the fourteenth regnal year of King Samacharadeva, who, 
according to Pargiter, may bo placed earlier than Harsha in the first quarter 
of the seventh century A.D. [J.A.S.B. (N.S.), Vol. VII, p. 600]. Pargiter 
points out in this connection that Karatdka is evidently a word formed from 
‘Karana’ which was the name of a mixed caste that had the occupation of 
writing, accounts, etc. Hence Karanika apparently meant a member of this 
caste. Pargiter is inclined to think that this caste was probably akin to the 
Kayastha caste. [Ibid., pp. 601-602.] The Brahmanas and Karanas are 
mentioned with due respect [cf. Sa (Kara)-qabrahmanamananapurwakaih — 
lines 20-21] in a later inscription, viz. the Ramganj copper-plate inscription 
of Mahamandahka I^varaghosa, who is supposed to have been a vassal long 
under the suzerainty of the Pala dynasty of Bengal. We find a simflar state- 
ment (e.g. Sakaranan prativasinafi Kshctrakaram^cha brahmanamanana- 
purwakam) in the Khalimpur copper-plate inscription of Dharmapala [Ep. 
Ind., Vol. IV, p. 260]. ■ Mr. N. G. Majumdar [Inscriptions of Bengal, p. 166, 
n. 2] also opines that Karapas were probably people of the Kayastha caste. 

In the above-mentioned Tipperah copper-plate grant, the- great-grand- 
father of Lokanatha’s father is described (in verse 2) as spirung from the family 
of the sage Bharadvaja and the great-grandfather and grandfather of his mother 
are, in verse 6, called ‘dvija-varah’ and ‘dvija-sattamafi’ respectively; but his 
mother’s father is in the same verse described os a ‘para^ava’. The verse in 
question, namely verse 6, has been rendered as follows : ‘ Of whom the 
mother’s (Gotradevi’s) father’s grandfather was the prominent Brahma^ia 
named. Sthavara; the respected (maternal) great-grandfather was the chief 
Brahmana called Vira; the grandfather was the paraSava Ke^ava, virtuous 
and able, held in high esteem by the good (satam-abliimatah), w'ho, being 
placed in charge of the army (bala-gana-praptadhikarah), was in touch with 
the King, a famous man.’ 

It is clear thus that although the first few ancestors, both paternal and 
maternal, of Lokanatha were of pure Brahmapa origin, his maternal grand- 
father Ke^ava could not claim such a pure origin for himself, for he is called 
para^ava . R, G. Basak, therefore, concludes that the Brahmin father of 
.KeSava might have married a 6udxa woman and the offspring of such a . 
union was therefore known as parasava. It is evident, therefore, that such 
asavar^a or unequal marriages were prevalent in Hindu society in Bengal 
century A.D. Erom the description of Ke4ava, as we find 
ui IS inscription, it may be inferred that in the then Hindu society of Bengal 
a parasava was not regarded as a mean member of the community because he 

very little to grumble or suffer for his impure or mixed origin. Thus 



WOMEK IN THE EARLY INSCRIPTIONS OP BENGAL 246 

• KeSava, the pata4ava, Beems to have occupied an important and influential 
position, for he was in charge of the royal army and was held in high esteem 
by the good. His daughter Gotradevi and his wife Astayika (verse 5) were 
alike deemed respectable, for otherwise Gotradevi’s son, that is, Lokanatha, 
Ifould not becbme a feudatory chief. According to Manu and other, subsequent 
law-givers, a Brahmana had also the right to marry a girl of any of the , three 
inferior castes like Kshatriya, Vaisya or 6udra. The right of a Brahmin to 
have a non-Brahmin partner is also upheld in a later law-book, which is a. 
product of Bengal during the early part of the fifteenth century A.D. This 
is the work of the well-known smrti writer, Brhaspati Misra, the courtier and 
minister of Sultan Jalaluddin or Jadu. [See Sukumar Sen, Prachin Bahgla 0 
Bahgali, p. 42.] 

It is needless to point out in this coimection that as mothers Hindu 
women have all along enjoyed an honourable position in society. That is 
why King Lokanatha mentions in his copper-plate grant the names of his 
mdther Gotradevi and her mother Astayika. The name of the Brahmapa 
lady, Suvachana, wife of Tosha^arman, daughter of Brhaspatisvamin, and 
mother of Fradosha^arman, the chieftain or mahasamanta of Lokanatha, is also 
mentioned in this grant. As pointed out by R. G. Basak, Bana’s Harshacharita 
furnishes another instance of an orthodox Brahmin marrying a Sudra wife 
during the seventh century A.D. According to Harshacharita, Bapa’s father, 
ChitrabhanUj.was a Brahmana, well-versed in the Vedic lore and is said to have 
kept the sacred fire. Rajadevi, Bapa’s mother, is also spoken of as a member of 
the Brahmin caste. There is, however, an allusion in the first chapter of the 
same Harshacharita, which shows that Bapa’s father had another wife, a ^udra 
lady, by whom ho had two sons, Chandrasena and Matrisena, who are aptly 
described as — ‘bhratarau parasavau’. [Ep. Ind., Vol. XV, pp. 306-6.] The 
traditional ideals of Indian womanhood, namely, u nflin ching devotion towards 
her husband, tenderness and modesty, grace and serenity, piety and chastity, 
affection and cordiality, and above all, the will to live and let live are alike 
reflected in these inscriptions. [For an interesting account of Indian woman- 
hood see my paper— A Retrospective Study of Indian Womanhood’ in the 
Calcutta Review, December, 1939.] 

In the Monghyr • copper-plate insraiption of Devapala (verse 9) we are 
told that King Dharmapala of the Pala dynasty of Bengal married Rappadeid, 
the daughter of the Rastrakuta King Parabala, who was an ornament of his 
ine, with the ostensible object of attaining household life [of. 6ri Parabalasya 
luhituh Kshitipatina Rastrakuta-tilakasya I Rappadevyah papir jagrhe 
jrhamedhina tena || ]. In verse 10 of the same inscription queen 
Rappadevi is described as representing the best ideals of Hindu womanhood 
jf that age. The profusion and depth of her qualities, the moral fervour 
ind exemplary nature of her conduct, made her, so to say, the guiding angel 
jf the royal household. By her own excellence she outstripped others and 
should put into the backgroimd other ladies of the royal harem. An incarnation 
purity and other feminine virtues, she would be looked upon with respect 



246 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


by people who considered her to bo nn ombodimont of the fortune goddess, 
the crown and glory of hor husband and tho presiding deity of tho roj^al house- 
hold. [Cf. Dhrtatanuriyam Lakshmib saltslmt kshitir nu sarlripl himabani- 
pateh Iclrttimurttahthava grhadovata | Iti vidadhati ^uchyachara vitarhavatihi 
prajah pralqiiigurubhir ya ^iiddlianlath' gunau-akarodadhali || ] A married 
TTiTida lady udth such proverbial devotion towards hor husband, pristine 
pmity of oharactor and elegance of conduet, is fit to bo a worthy mother of a 
worthy son. So she hod tlio anighty King Dovapaladova ns her son, who was 
like a pearl bom inside tho crast of an oyster. [6laghya pativratasau mukta* 
ratnaih samudra-duktirivo 1 ^ri Dovapaladovaah prasanna-vaktraih suta 
inasuta || — averse 11 of tho MonghjT C.P. of Dovapala, in Gauda-Lokhamala.] 
In verse 10 of the Nalanda copper-plate inscription of Dovapala [Monograph 
No. 1 of V.R. Society, p. 26] wo have tho some picture of Rapnadovi, tho 
mother nf TCjn g Dovapala : ‘That purc-soulod Indy rose above tho other members 
of the royal seraglio by reason of her inherent noble qualities. “ Is she an 
incarnation of tho goddess of Fortune, is she tho Earth goddess that has 
assumed a visible shape, is she an embodiment of tho King’s fame or tho 
tutelary deity (of tho roj^al household)” — such was tho deliberation on which 
she kept engaged tho subjects (of the king).’ A good and faithful partner, 
who was alike with her husband in all respects, was thus considered to bo tho 
crown and glory of family life. A relation of lovo and amity, peace and 
good-will, was thought to bo tho basis of family life and tho essence of con- 
jugal partnership. [Of. ‘IMaitrlA Karupiynratnn-pramuditahrdayalr proyasiih 
sandadhanah samyak-sarhbodhividya-sarida-mnlojaln-kshulitajnrmapankab I 
jitva yah kamakari-prabhavamabhibhavam 6a5vntim prapa ^ilntim sa firiman 
lokanatho jayati dai§avalohnya^cha Gopaladovnli || — averse 1 (lines 1-5) of 
the Bhagalpur copper-plate inscription of Nuruyanapala.] Sahadeva, a 
‘vajivaidya’ or ‘veterinary physician,’ is tho writer of an eulogy (pra^asti) 
describing that the temple of Janarddana was built by Vi^vaditya at Gaya 
during tho reign of King Nayapala. This fact is recorded in tho ICrsnadvaiilca 
Temple inscription [Gauda-Lokhamala, pp. 110-20; J.A.S.B. (1900), pp. ISO- 
OS] wherein it is stated that this work of Sahadeva [verso 19] should endure 
and be the cause of such feelings as lovo and amity, serenity and joy with 
which a loving husband entertains his beloved lady. [Cf. ‘ Vajivaidya-Sahadeva 
niruktih tat praSastiriyamastu nitantaih promasauhrda-sukhailvadharitri- 
sajjanasya hrdaye rama^nva’.] As in all ages, conformity in taste and 
outlook is the basis of social relation and the cardinal principle of harmony 
in conjugal life. A wife was thus to be a replica of her husband’s tastes and 
desires, alike in heart and soul. Thus Ichchhadevi, the wife of Garga, the 
minister of King Dharmapala, is represented in the third verse of the Badal 
Pillar inscription as being a replica of her husband’s inner will. [Cf, 
Patnichchha nama tasyasidichchhevanta-rwivartini I Nisargga nirmmala- 
snigdha kantischandramaso yatha |I ’] She had the mild qualities and the 
soft beauty and dalliance of the partner of the moon-god. [G.L., pp. 77-78, 
.n.] A peaceful and happy family life with a faithful aud devoted wife 



WOMEN IN THE EABLY INSORITTIONS OE BENOAIi 247 

who is alike in all respects with her hushan^ has been the traditional aim of 
married life in Hindu society. So one should have a partner like oneself 
(atmanurupa). Ralladevi, mother of KedaramiSra and wife of SomeSvara, the 
minister of King Devapala, is described in verse 10 (lines 10-11) of the Garuda 
i^Stone Pillar inscription as being a like partner for her like spouse. [Of. 
Siva iva karam ^ivaya Haririva Lakshmya grha^amaprepsuh | Anurupaya 
vidhivat Ralladevyah (variant readings are Taraladevyah and Ratnadevyah) 
sa jagraha |I ’] An ideal wife is a source of repose in household life. By her 
sheltering care, genial manners and pleasant conduct she proves herself to be 
a messenger of peace, a harbinger of light and life. The virtuous lady Pai, 
the consort of the respectable Brahmin scholar Yudhi§ithira and mother of the 
celebrated ^ridhara, is, therefore, described as being a veritable source of 
repose of her husband’s heart (ohitta-vi^rantih). A woman of infinite beauty, 
she in fact the home of right conduct (SUa), nobility of heart (audSiya), 
tranquillity and grace (sri). As the ideal partner of her spouse, she gave him 
no cause of annoyance or dissatisfaction and was in fact the cause of her hus- 
band’s repose and integrity of mind. [Paiti dharmmapatni dhiravarasyasya 
chitta-vi^rantih ! A(a)sldasima-kantih silaudaryaM (iri) yam vasatih 11 — 
verse 24 (lines 40-42) of the Kamauli copper-plate inscription'of Vaidyadeva.] 
A devoted wife is to all intents and puipioses an embodiment of her husband’s 
delight and satisfaction. The charm of her body and the magic qualities of 
her head and heart are alike responsible to briqg about this desired end. The 
Kamauli copper-plate inscription [verse 6, lines 7-8] speaks of Pratapadevi, 
the consort of Bodhideva and the mother of the illustrious Vaidyadeva, as 
being an incarnation of the spirit of joy and satisfaction of her husband. A 
lady of exquisite beauty, she was the resting place or the pivot of gloiy and 
spiritual advancement in her family. [Of. ‘ Asya Pratapadevi patni dharmma- 
rddhi-ldrtti-visrantih asidaamakantih santoshasyakrtihpatyuh’J 

Fickleness of character or conduct is always condemned on the part of 
women in Hindu society. Steadfast devotion towards husband, steadiness 
in thought and action and sobriety in speech and conduct are alike needed for 
a lasting union or a durable relation. A barren 'family life is something 
unwelcome for a Hindu woman. A woman should not, therefore, be .fleeting 
like the goddess of Fortime or covet a childless fate like that of Sati (or the 
goddess Durga), the daughter of Daksha. Babb§-, the wifa of Kedara Mi&a, 
is, therefore, not likened to Lakshmi or Sati. She is spoken of as having no 
parallel. [Of. ‘Devagramabhava tasya patin Babbahhidhabhavat | Atulya 
chalaya Lakshmya Satya ohapya [napatya] ya || ’ — verse 16, lines 17-18 of 
the Badal Pillar inscription; G. L., p. 82, f.n.] The highest thing of glory for a 
TTindn udfe is her reputation of being a proverbially devoted consort. It is 
the best badge of honour for a woman, the most admirable trait of her ohaiacter 
in the estimation of people. Eajjeka, the mother of Viradeva, enjoyed such 
reputation. The Goshrawa inscription (verse 4,. line B) accordingly records 
that her -namp. became a proverb for all men and women of her age. [Of. 
Lokah pativratakatha-paribhavanasu sainkirttanam prathamameva karoti 



248 


B. 0. LAW VOLTJMB 


yasyab.] Indragupta, the father of Viradeva, is described as shining like the 
crystal moon for being united with a woman of such remarkable excellence 
and purity. [Rajjekaya dvijavarah sa guni grhipya yukto raraja kalaya- 
malaya yathenduh — averse 4, lino 6,] Because of such parents, the son 
was conscientious in outlook from his very birth. [Cf. TabhyamajayataV 
sutah sutaram viveld— verso 6, lino 6.] In the Deopara inscription [Inscrip- 
tions of Bengal, pp. 47 and 62] of Vijayasena wo have a similar description of 
Ya^odevi, the ‘great queen’ of Hemantasena. She was a store-house of 
loveliness and, owing' to devotion to her husband, acquired "wide, eternal and 
bright fame. She gained the heart of the three worlds by her (beautiful) 
form. [Cf. Maharajfii yasya svaparanikhilantahpuravadh1i6iroratna6repi, 
kira^asara^smerachara^a | Nidhibkante(h) sadhvivrata’vitatanityojjvalayafia 
Yaiodevi nama tribhuvanamanojfia krtirabhut j) — averse 14, line 14.] 

According to the ideal of that age it was natural to expect that a son 
would imbibe the good qualities of his parents and the purity and chastity of 
the mother would thus be reflected in the character of her son. [Cf . ‘ NirmmalS 
manasi vachi samyatah kaya-karmmani cba yah sthitah 4uch! rajyamapa 
nirupaplavam pitur bodhisatva iva saugatam padam’ — lines 18-19 of the 
Monghyr copper-plate inscription of Devapala.] A good son eimobles his 
paternal and maternal lines alike by his good deeds. In verse 14 of the 
Ghoshrawa inscription, Viradeva is thus described as being the cause of the 
elevation of both the families of his father and mother through his own glorious 
deeds. [Cf. ‘Yena svena yaSodhvajena ghatitau vaihSabudichipathe’ — 
line 17,] A good daughter is also an object of glory for her parents. By her 
adorable traits, the purity and integrity of her character, she calls up the 
prestige of the family of her husband and the families of her father and mother. 
Lajja, thei queen of Vigrahapala I, is thus likened to the river Jahnavi, the 
supposed consort of the sea. Bom of the Haihaya race of which she is called 
the . ornament, she became through the force of her character an emblem of 
purity, a chastening example in the families of her parents and husband. 
[Cf. Lajjeti tasya jaladheriva Jahnukanya patni babhflva krta-Haihaya- 
vamSabhu^a yasyah Kuchin! charitani pitu^cha vaihse patyuscha pavana- 
vidhih paramo babhuva || — ^Bhagalpur copper-plate inscription of Narayapa- 
pSla, verse 9, lines 16-16.] By producing a worthy son, a woman is thought 
to enhance the family prestige of her husband. Babba Devi, the "wife of 
Bledara Mifira, is, therefore, likened to the illustrious Devoid, the mother of 
the mythical god Ekshpa, "who had Ya^oda or the glorifying energy as his 
foster-mother. [Cf. *Sa Devakiva tasmat yasodaya svikrtam patiih Laksh- 
^yah I Cropala-priyakarakamasutapurushottamamtanayaih || ’ — Badal Pillar 
inscription, ■verse 17, line 18.] We have a similar description of Tara, in 
^rse 31, of the Nalanda copper-plate inscription of Devapala [Monograph 
o. 1 of the V.R. Society , pp. 24 and 31]. * Just as from Maya was bom the son 
° (he. Buddha), the conqueror of the god of Love, or Karttikeya, 

who delighted the hearts of all the gods from 6iva and Uma, so also from 
er (Tara) was born his (Samaragra'vira’s) son Balaputradeva, before whose 


>VOMEN IN THE EABLY 1NS(3B1PTI0NS OF BENOAIi 249 

lotus-like footstool a host of ’kings bo'wed do'wn. He was a past master in 
lowering the pride of all the lords of the Earth.’ [Cf. Mayayami'va EEmadeva- 
vijayi ^uddhodanasyatmajah Skando nanditadevavxndalirdayah Sambhoru- 
mayami'va i Tasyanta[sya] narendra’vrnda’vinamat padaravindasanah 
i^arworwipatigarwakharwanachanah Sri valaputroh bhavat H ] A worthy- 
son is looked upon as an embodiment of the virtues of his parents, the outcome, 
so to say, of good actions performed by the mother during her pre'rious life. 
[Cf. ‘ Pur V va -pur ■waj anu rjjamnakarmmapakadabh'ut sutastasyaitasyam dvija- 
dlusa (4a) — ^pujyak 4ri4ridliarah parali* — ^Kamauli copper-plate inscription of 
Vaidyadeva, verse 25, lines 42-43.] 

A mother contributes a great deal towards the formation of the character 
of her son and as such she has a special claim to his esteem. As mother ehe 
is fondly associated •with her children and in the genealogical accounts given 
in most of those inscriptions the name of the mother is usually mentioned in 
connection •with that of her son or daughter. An instance of the mention of 
the mother’s name in connection with that of her daughter, as pointed out 
already, is furnished by the Tipperah copper-plate grant where we find the 
name of Astayika, the mother of Lokanatha’s mother Gotrade-vi. Sometimes 
the son is introduced through his mother and takes after his mother’s name. 
Thus Madanapala is called the son of Madanadevi in the klanahali grant of 
Madanapala (verse 18, lines 26-27). [Cf. ‘Tadanu Madanade-ri-nandana 
schandragaurai4charitabhuvana-garbhak praihiubhik kirttipuraih I Kshiti 
macharama-tata stasya saptavdhidamnimabhrta Madanapalo Ramapalat- 
majanma || ’ — G.L., 158.] It appears firom these inscriptions that in all 
cases of gifts of land in the form of charitable endo’wment the object is stated 
to be the enhancement of the religious merit and the glorification of one’s 
o-wnself and his parents. [Cf. matapitroratmanaScha punyaya4obhivTddhaye 
in Damodarpur C.P. No. 3 and later inscriptions hire Baghaura Image Inscr.] 
The mother is thus given a share of the religious merit and glory of her son 
’ or daughter as the case may be. As mothers therefore, women enjoyed an 
unique position in the estimation of their sons and daughters. In most of the 
land grants, moreover, in the customary list of persons and officials who are 
made aware of each and every detail of the proposed endo’wment of land in 
which their formal consent is solicited (Cf. matamastu bhavatam), mention is 
made of the rajfil or queen. [Cf. Belaba C.P. of Bhojavarman, line 29; 
Bampal C.P. "of Srichandra, line 18 and so on.] This shows that women had 
no mean position since the queen is duly informed of the condition, object 
and nature of the proposed grant of land and is cited among the -witnesses who 
ratified the' gift by their consent whether tacit or express. 

Sometimes parallels are introduced in these inscriptions to depict the 
character of women. This shows that men and women of that age were very 
fond of such illustrations which were mainly dra-wn ifrom the field of popular 
literature like the epics and the Puranas. The ideals of womanhood depicted by 
such epic and Purapic characters may be supposed to represent the best public 
opinion of the time and as such they had a special appeal to the imaghlation 



260 


B, 0. IiAW VOLTJMB 


of the people. In verse 6 of the Khalimpnr copper-plate inscription of 
Dharmapala, Deddadevi, the queen of Gopala I, is accordingly likened to 
Rohipi, the consort of the moon-god ; Svaha, the wife of the fire-god; Sarwa^i, 
the wife of iSiva ; Bhadra, the queen of Kuvera ; Pauldmi, the wife of Indra and 
Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu. [Cf. 6itamdoriva Rohipi hutabhujah Svaheva!> 
tejonidheh ^arwapiva l§ivasya guhyakapater Bhadreva Bhadratmaja | Paido- 
miva Purandarasya dayita 6ri Deddadevityabhut devi tasya vinodabhu 
rmuraripor I'nlrsh-mi riva Kshmapatefi || ] ^rikanchana, the mother of ^ri- 
ohandra and the wife of Trailokyachandra, is also described in the same way: 
‘As the Moonlight (lady) of the Moon, 6achi of the Conqueror (i.e. Indra), 
Gauri of Hara and 6ri of Hari, so also was Srikanchana, charming like gold 
(Kafiohana), the beloved of that (King) whose authority was acknowledged 
(by all).’ [Cf. ‘Jyotsneva chandrasya 6achlva jishnorggauri Harasyeva 
Hareriva ^rib | Tasya priya kafichanakantirasichchhri-kanchanetyanchita^asa- 
nasya H ’ — ^Rampal copper-plate inscription of Srichandra, verse 6, lines 
10-12.] Sadbhava, the wife of Dhavalaghosa and the mother of Ifivaraghbsa, 
is described in the same manner. ‘His wife Sadbhava by name was a second 
Bhavani (wife of &va) in appearance. She was as much devoted to her 
husband as Sita (herself) and resembled Padma, the wife of Vishnu.’- [Cf. 
Bhavanivapara murttya Site(va) (pati)vrata I Sadbhava nama tasyabhud- 
bharya Padmeva ^arnginajh (i — averse 4, lines 7-8, of the Bamgunj copper- 
plate inscription of Kvaraghosha .] We have a similar description of Vilasadew, 
the chief queen of Vijayasena, in verse 10 of the Naihati copper-plate inscrip- 
tion of Vallalaseua. ‘The chief queen of this lord of Earth was Vilasadevi 
shining as the crest-jewel of his female apartment, just as Lakshmi was the 
wife of Vishnu and Gauri of (the god) having the yo-ung moon on his crest 
(i.e. Siva).’ [Cf. Padmalayeva dayita purushottamasya Gamriva vala-rajani- 
kara-dekharasya 1 Asya pradhanamahishi jagadi^varasya fiuddhSntamaulima- 
pirasa Vilasade-vi (| ] 

Similar passages are also found in some of the contemporary inscriptions 
of Assam. Thus in the^Gauhati copper-plate No. I of Indrapala [Padmanath 
Bhattacharya, KamarupaiasanabaK, pp. 120 and 127] we have a similar 
description of Durlabha, the queen of Purandarapala. She was a like consort 
of her husband as ^aohi was of the god Indra, the goddess ^iva of 6ambhu, 
Rati of the Cupid god (Madana), Lakshmi of Hari and Roliiim of the Moon-god. 
[Cf. Sachiva, Sakrasya Si(ve)va ^ambho Rati(h) Smarasyeva Hareriva 6rih I Sa 
Rohipiva Kshapadakarasya tasyanur-upaprapaya babh-uva || — verse 14.] 
In the second copper-plate inscription of the same ruler llhid., pp. 137-38] 
the pious lady Anuradha, the wife of the Brahmin Vasudeva, is likened to 
Arimdhatl, the -wife of the sage Va^i§tha for her purity of character and in 
point' of holiness to the river Gahga. [Cf. Patni gilai rarundhativasit I Anura- 
dheti kulina Gangevapastakalikalusha H —verse 23.] Ln Dharmmapala’s 
wpper-plate grant No. 1 \Ihidi., pp. 160-61] Harshapala’s queen Ratna and the 
Brahmin lady Pauka are described as being like the goddess Parwati, the 
. e o > iva. The beautiful lady Chheppayika is said to have been noted for 



WOMEN IN THE EAEEY INSORIPTIONS OE BENGAL 


251 


her devotion to husband and as such she was like T.fl.TrBTiTnT [Cf. verse 18 of 
the second copper-plate grant of Eatnapala, Ibid., p. 114.] La(Ees are also 
represented as mothers of ideal offspring. Thus in the copper-plat^ inscription 
of Harjjaravarmma (verse 11), Jivadevi,. the mother of Harijaravarmma, is 
idescribed as being like Kunti, the mother of Yudhisthira and Subhadra, the 
mother of Abhimanyu. [/6?d., p. 52.] Similarly in the Nidhanpur copperr 
plate inscription of Bhaskaravarmma (verse 12), Yajfiavati, the mother of 
klahendravarmma, is likened to the sacrificial wood which produces fire. 
{Ibid., p. 29.] 

Some of the customary beliefs and conventions in Hindu society present 
themselves before our view when we make a careful study of the inscriptions of 
Bengal. An instance of this kind is supplied by the Eampal copper-plate 
inscription of ^richandra. In verse 4 of this inscription, we have an interesting 
explanation as to the origin of the name of Suvancipachandra. ‘As his mother 
had a desire, due to the longing (natural to a pregnant woman) of seeing the 
disc of the rising moon, on a new moon day, and as she was satisfied by (having) 
“a golden moon” (namely, her son, comparable to the new moon in beauty), 
people gave liim the name Suvarn^aehandra. [Cf. Da[r^e]sya mata .kila 
dohadena didpk’shamanodayichandravimvaih I Suvano^iachandre^a hi toshiteti 
suvarjjpachandrajh samudaharanti || ] It appears thus that the physical 
beauty of their children was a matter of great concern for the mothers. 
It may be noted, as pointed out by N. G. Majumdar (Inscriptions of Bengal, 
p. 7, f.n.), that it is a common belief even at the present day that if a pregnant 
woman sees the disc of the rising moon on new moon days her issue becomes 
as beautiful as the moon. 

Practice of charity on auspicious days like the eleventh lunar day (ekadasi) 
or the last day of a month (samkranti) was thought as at present to be specially 
efficacious. Bestowal of gifts on the occasion of a lunar or solar eclipse seems 
alike to have been a common practice especially among the womenfolk in 
Hindu society. The EamauU copper-plate inscription of Yaidyadeva records 
the gift of land by paramamahesvara-paramavaisIuQava-maharajadhiraja 
paramesvara-paramabhattaraka Sriman Yaidyadeva [lines 47-48] during the 
fourth year of his victorious reign [line 63] to ^ Brahmin named Srldhara, 
who was an inhabitant of the Varendra cotmtry [lines 37-46]. The land in 
question was situated in ES^marupama^dala belonging to the Pragjyotishapura 
bhukti [lines 48-49] and the gift was made during the last day of the month 
of Yai^akha on an auspicious eleventh lunar day. [Cf. Etasmai sasanam 
pradadvaidyadeva— Kshi [kshi] tisvarah I Vaiggkhe vishu[va]tyancha svargar- 
tham harivasare || — averse 28, line 46.] According to the Bangadh copper- 
plate inscription, the village of Kuratepallika in the Gokalikaman^ala in the 
HcKvarshavishaya of Pun^avarddhanabhukti was similarly • given to a 
-Brahmin named Krsh^aditya Sarmma by King Mahipala I on the last day of a 
month, the grant being made by the King after his bath in the holy waters 
of the Ganges. • [Cf. Krsriadityagarmmane vigu(shu)va- samkrantau vidhivat 
Gafigayaih snatva sasamkrtya pradattohsmabhih — Clines 47-50.] The 



252 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Amgachhi copper-plate inscription of Vigrahapala III (line 24) speaks of a 
cfTYiilar gift of land to a Brahmana during the twelfth or thirteenth year of 
his reign hy ICiTig Vigrahapala, son of Nayapala. According to Kielhom 
the gift was made on the occasion of a lunar eclipse after taking bath in the 
Ganges. [Gauda-Lekhamala, p. 122, f.n.] The Barrackpur copper-plate A 
inscription of Vijayasena similarly informs us that four patakas of land belong- 
ing to the village of Ghasasambhoga-bhattevada in the Kha^vishaya of the 
Paup^avardhanabhukti, yielding an income of two hundred kaparddaka- 
puranas [hues 21-34], were given to a Brahmana named Udayakaradeva- 
Sarman pines 37-39]. The grant was made as fee for the performance of 
Homa in connection with the Kanaka-Tulapurusha-Mahadana (i.e. the great 
gift of a golden Tulapurusha) ceremony of the Maha-mahade'vd (‘the great 
great-queen’) Vilasadevi during a lunar eclipse, within the palace at Vikrama- 
pura pines 39-43]. The Naihati copper-plate inscription also speaks of the 
gift of a golden horse (i.e. the performance of the Hemasvadana ceremony) 
by the same queen Vilasade-vi, mother of VaUalasena, during a solar 
eclipse (verse 14) on the banks of the Ganges. As a fee for the per- 
formance of this ceremony the village of Vallahittha in Uttaia-Ra^a in 
Vardhamanabhukti was given by her son VaUalasena to the preceptor 6ri- 
vasudeva^armman [lines 37-54]. The Tarpandighi copper-plate inscrip- 
tion (line 44) speaks of the gift of a golden horse and chariot (of. hemasvaratha- 
mahadanacharya). The Sahitya-Parishat copper-plate inscription of Vi^va- 
rupasena speaks of the grant of eleven plots of land to the Brahmapa, the 
Avallika-pandita, Halayudhasarmman, Two of these plots are said to have 
been given away on the Uttarayanasaihkranti day of the thirteenth regnal 
year. Three of these plots are said to have been granted on the occasion of a 
lunar eclipse observed by the queen-mother (line 62). Two of these plots 
were granted by the prince (Kumara) Suryyasena whose birth-day was thus 
celebrated. Another plot was similarly given by ICumara Purushottamasena 
on the Utthanadvadasi day in the fourteenth regnal year (lines 67-58) [Inscrip- 
tions of Bengal, pp. 141-42]. The Bamganj copper-plate inscription of 
Isvaraghosha also records the grant of a village to a Brahmapa named Bhatte- 
ITibbokasarman. The donor is said to have made the gift after having bathed 
in the river Jatoda on the last day of the month of Margga^irsha (lines 31, 83). 

Prom the Paharpur copper-plate inscription of the Gupta year 159 (i.e. 
478-79 A.D.), it appears that pious gifts of land were sometimes made con- 
jointly by married couples in Hindu society. The inscription in question 
records the foUowing facts. [Ep. Ind., Vol. XX, pp. 63-64.] Natha-sarmma, 
d Brahma,pa and Rami, his wife,- approached the District Ofaoer (ayuktaka) - 
and the City Council headed by the Mayor (Nagara-sresthi) at Pun^avardhana 
^th the request that in accordance with the procedure prevalent in the 
ocality, they might be aUowed to deposit three dinaras in return for one and 
* Kidyavapas of land distributed among four different viUages, to be 
^ owed in perpetuity for the mainteixauce of requisites of the worship of 
ats such as sandal, incense, flower, lamps, etc. and for the construction of 



■WOMEN" IN THE EARLY INSCRIPTIONS OP BENGAL . 263 

a resting-place at the Vihara of the Jaina preceptor Guhanandl at Vata-Gohali. 
Their prayer was granted and land was sold for the aforesaid purpose. The 
donation of a Brahmana couple for the worship of Jinas, as recorded herein, 
is "very interesting for it shows the spirit of religious toleration among the 
people of this period. The Aphsad inscription of Adityasena informs us that 
a temple of Vishpu was made b3' Adityasena while a matha or monastery 
was made by his mother ^rimatide'vi and a tank was excavated by his .queen 
Ko:^adevi [R. B. Banerji, Bahgalar Itihasa, Part I, p. 117]. Images of gods 
were also made through the munificence of pious ladies. The most con- 
spicuous example of an image of this class is the well-known Dhulba^ ^arwani 
image. The accompanying inscription [Ep. Ind., Vol. XVII, p. 360] shows 
that the image of the goddess ^larwani, one of the forms of Durga, was the 
pious work of Mahadevi Prabhavati, queen of Deva-Khadga. One of the 
bronze images found at Kurkihar dated in the 19th year of King Vigrahapala 
(i.e. Vigrahap§,la II or Vigrahapala III) bears the inscription — ‘Dulapavadhu- 
Pekhokaj'a’ (lino 3) [J.B.O.R.S., Vol. XXVI, pp. 36-38]. A similar 
bronze image found at Kurkihar, bearing the date year 3 of the victorious 
reign of King Vigrahapala, is said to have been the pious work of Tifaika, son 
t>f Dulapa. [Cf. ‘devadharmo-’yam pravara-mahayana-jaina pramopasaka- 
•Dulapasutah Tikukasya*. (Fide 072ie.)] The name of the mother is also 
mentioned in an imago installed by her son. The Keoar Vishp.u image is 
said to have been the work of Vafigoka, son of the couple Sayoga and Anuyami 
[Ep. Ind., Vol. XVII, pp. 363jBF.]. Besides such pious works of charity by 
women we have instances, according to the literary ■tradition, of women taking 
initiation and -engaging themselves in occult religious practices. The Charya- 
padas, the earliest, specimens of Bengali literature, bear ample testimony to the 
practice of Tantric Buddliism in Bengal. The Sahaja-yana or Sahajiya and 
Vajra-jmna types of Tantric worship seem to have been not unkno'wn among 
the people of Eastern Bengal, the seat of government of the Chandra kings. 
Mayanamati, a lady of the Chandra family, is thus said to have been the 
disciple of a Tantric saint. She is said to have acquired great psychic powers 
and the name of her son Gk)piohandra is celebrated in popular ballads called — 
‘Gopichandrer Gana’. 

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata seem to have enjoyed a very ■wide 
popvdarity among the masses in Bengal. Men and women of all ranks seem 
to have heard with reverence the recitation and exposition of the texts of 
these epics. The Badal Pillar inscription (verse 24, line 26) and verse- 33 of 
the Deopaxa inscription of Vijayasena mention the name of Valmiki, and 
the RSmayana though not expressly mentioned by name is clearly indicated. 
[Cf. Atilomaharshapeshu Kaliyuga-Valmiki-janmapisuneshu | Bhannmeti- 
hasaparwashu punyatma- yah srularwya-vEpot || ] The Manahali copper- 
plate grant of MadanapSla records the gift of land in Halavarttamandala in 
the Kotivarshavishaya of Paup^a-vardhanabihukti to a Brahmin named 
Vate^vara Svami (line 44). The gift in question was made by paramesvara 
paramabhattaraka maharajadhiraja Siiman hladanapaladeva, son of parama- 



264 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


saugata maharajadhiraja Bamapaladeva (linos 31-32), during the eighth 
year of his victorious reign (lino 68). The grant of the aforesaid land was 
made as a fee to the above-named Brahmin scholar for recitation and exposition 
of the texts of the Mahabharata written by Vedavyasa at the instance of 
Ohitramatiliadevi, tho chief queen or favourite consort of Madanapala. [Cf.y 
‘ ^rivatesvara svami^armmano pattemahudovi-Clntramatikaya Vodavyfisa- 
prokta-prapathita-Mahabharatasamutsarggita dakshinatvcna bhagavantam 
Buddhabhattarakamuddidya ^asanikrtya pradattohsmabhilji’ — lines 42-46.] 
The queen of a Buddhist ruler would thus liavc no scruple to hear from a 
Brahmin scholar tho talcs of tho Groat Epic. Tho Dcopara inscription of 
Vijayasena (verse 4) refers to tho Great Epic ns ‘the honey -stream of beautiful 
stanzas, wliich the son of Para^ara (i.e. Vyasa) had caused to flow to please 
the ears of mankind . . . ’ [Of. ‘Suktimadhvikadhurub Para^aryyona viSva^ra- 
vanaparisaraprinanaya pranitah’ — ^Inscriptions of Bengal, p. 46.] 

A passage in the Manahali copper-plate inscription of Madanapala seems 
to point out that women wore sometimes employed as nurses for rearing up 
children in well-to-do families. Gopala III is hero described as a baby in 
arms playing on the lap of his nurse. [Cf. Dhatri-palana jrmbhamana- 
mahima karpurapamsutkarairdevah kirttimayo nija [x] vitanute yah 
^ai^ave Kri^tam— verso 17, lines 24-26.] 

Monogamy seems to have been tho ordinary custom followed in Hindu 
society though polygamy was not unknown especially among tho princely 
class or well-to-do persons. Mutual joalqusy among rival co-wives appears 
to have been the traditional rule in cases of polygamy. [Cf. Sapatna-Sunyaih 
in line 23 of the Monghyr copper-plate of Devapala.] There were instances 
again where the normal rule would not work. In verso 9 of tho Banga^ 
copper-plate inscription of Mahipala I, wo have the picture of an ideal wife 
trying to win tho heart of her husband through the magic power of her warmer 
attraction without incurring the displeasure of his co-wife. [Cf. ‘ Yarn svaminam 
rajagunairanunamasevate oha[rutara]nurakta | Utsaha-mantra-prabhu^akti- 
Lakshmih prthyiih sapatnimiva fiilayanti i| ’—lines 19-20.] In verso 11 of 
the^ Ghoshrawa inscription, we have similarly the picture of an ideal husband 
lovmg his wives equally without any kind of partiality. [Cf. Srimadvihara- 
parihara-vibhushitahgya | Udbhasitopi vahu-Eirttivadhu-patitve yah sadliu 
sadhujanaih prasastah.] Nevertheless, as in aU ages, there was the 
Ideal of a peaceful family life with a single wife. [Cf. ‘6rima(n Gopala)deva 

schmataramabane rekapatnya ivaUro bhartta |1 ’—verse 8, line 13, 

o mgaohhi copper-plate inscription.] Numerous instances of polygamy, 

^ owever, may be gathered from these inscriptions. The Belava copper-plate 
mscr^tmn of Bhojavarman (verse 12) informs us that Malavyadevi became 
e c e queen of Samalavarmman though his seraglio was full of the daughters 
Malavyadevi’s daughter was Trailokyasundari and her son 
inspw Pjiscriptions of Bengal, p. 23.] The Bhuvanesvar 

atta-Bhavadeva informs ns that Govarddhana married a lady 
O' 1 y name (verse 11). Gtovarddhana is said to have accepted as his 



WOMEN IN THE EAHETf INSOHiTTlONS OE BENGAL 


266 


second wife Safigoka, the adorable and pious daughter of a Vandyaghatiya 
Brahmapa, who was a jewel among ladies (verse 13). 

As at present, widowhood was regarded as the most tragic incident 
in the life of a married woman in. Hindu society. In the Nalanda copper- 
-«;)late inscription [Monograph No. I of V.R. Society, pp. 24 and 31], K'ing 
Devapala is described as — ‘the preceptor in tlie initiation of the wives of all 
his enemies to widowhood’ . [Of. Samasta4atruvanitavaidhavyadikshagurum — 
verse 33, line 63.] Before the establishment of royal authority by Gropala I 
there was a period of anarchy in Bengal when, according to Taranath, the widow 
of one of the departed chiefs would rule every night the person who had been 
chosen as long. A woman, the moment she became a widow, would naturally 
be shorn of all kinds of luxury and enjoyment. As at present, she would in 
the first instance forfeit her right to adorn herself with the vermilion mark in 
the partition of the hair of her head. In verse 17 (lines 24-26) of the Manahali 
copper-plate inscription of Madanapala, Kumarapala is described as effacing 
with a playful hand the vermilion marks on the heads of his enemies’ wives 
and thus causing their widowhood. [Cf. Pratta(tya)rthi-pramadakadambaka- 
sira^indura-lopakrama-knda-patalapa:DiireshasushuveGopalamurvvibhujaiu.] 
The use of vermilion by married ladies was thus a common custom in Hindu 
society. It may also be deduced from contemporary literature. Thus the 
fifth stanza of a work called Adbhutasagara [Muralidhara Jha’s ed., Prabhakari 
f Co., Benares, 1905, pp. 1-4], which is ascribed to Vallalasena and which gives a 
poetical account of the Senas, speaks of the heads of enemies’ wives bearing 
vermilion marks; [Of. Yasyafighrib patibhaikshyakakuviluthadvidveshinaxi- 
Sirabsindurotkaramudrito janalipimirmuktiyantram dvisham.] Govardhana 
Acharya, the court-poet of Bang Lakshma^asena, also speaks of the 
hair on the head of a lady giving the idea of a heart rent in twain 
by the vermilion mark. [Cf. Bandhanabhajo’mushyab chikurakalapasya 
muktamanasya 1 Sinduritasimantachchhalina hrdayam vidirnameva H ’ — 
Sukumar Sen, Prachin Bangla 0 Bangali, p. 61.] CoUyrium seems to have 
been used as an eye-paint by fashionable ladies. The Cluttagong copper- 
plate inscription of Damodara (verse 6) gives a figurative description of the 
fame of Damodara. ‘Although by his bright fame he absolutely removed the 
blackness of the world over which was showered the coU^yriuin particles from 
the eyes of the wives of his enemies, his (stock of) fame was never exhausted. 
[Cf. Yasyaita(d) yaSasojjvalena bhuvanam nishkaUkam kurwata ^atrustiijana- 
lochananjanakanasaram na tat seshitam.] Fashionable Hindu ladies seem 
alike to have used rouge or some such paint for the decoration of their body . 
^ [Of. '^atruvanita-prasadhana-vilopi-vimalasi-jaladhaiah — ^line 14 of the 
Bhagalpur copper-plate inscription of Narayanapala.] Camphor is often 
alluded to and was probably used in toilet by ladies. [Cf. ‘Medasvi-Bortti 
ramarendra-vadhu-kapola-karppura-patramakari sa kumarapalab’ — averse 16 
of the Manahali copper-plate grant of Madanapala.] Floral wreaths, which 
form the simplest type of decoration even to this day, were alike in vogue 
among fashionable ladies of that age. Ladies would thus use garlands around 


256 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


their neck and floral wreaths to cover tho tresses on their head. [Cf. ‘ Siddha- 
strinamapi sirassrajoshvarppitalji Ketaklnani patrapidul.i suQhiramabhavan 
hhriga-^ahdanumeyah’— verso 10, linos 23-24, of tlio Bhagalpur coppor-plato 
inscription of Narayanapala.] Tho Dcopara inscription (vorso 1) holds before 
us tho picture of a bashful lady trying to cover her nudity with the help o^h 
the garlands around her nock at tho removal of her brcast-cloth. [Cf. 
Vakshom^uka harnpasadhvasakrstamnulimulyachchhatuhataratalayadipablia- 
sah I Devyastrapamukulitam muldiamindubhubhirwikshyananani hasitani- 
jayanti dambhob || ] In tho Edilpur copper-plato inscription of KeSavasena, 
we find mention of ladies adorned with smiling flowers. [Cf. Udbhinnasmita- 
mafijariparichita diklcaminih.] 

Seclusion of women from public view seems to havo boon tho usual custom 
in Hindu society. In vorso 7, lino 12, of tho Edilpur copper-plato inscription 
of Ke^avasena wo are told that King Vallulasona carried away the fortune 
goddesses of his enemies on palanquins supported by staffs made of olophant’s 
tusk, from tho battlefield, which was made impassable on account of a stream 
of blood. [Cf. ‘Yasya 3 'odlianasimni ^oicutnsariddubsanohara, 3 ’aih hrtab sam- 
saktadvipadantadandaSivikamaropya vairiSriyab’.] Wo have reason, there- 
fore, to believe that respectable ladies would be carried on a litter whilo going 
from one place to another and would not as a rule expose themselves before 
the passers-by in public thoroughfares. In tho palaces of longs wo have 
references to inner apartments meant for ladies of tho ro 3 'al household. Tho 
Madhainagar copper-plate inscription (verse 0) of Lakshmanasena speaks of 
Bamadevi, queen of Vallalasena, as tho crost-jowol of tho ro 3 ^al harem. [Cf. 
antabpnramauliratna.] In verso 23 of the Edilpur copper-plato inscription 
it is stated that when Ke^avasona passed through tho city, tho ladies of the 
city ascending on the tops of skyscraping houses would be gazing upon his 
beautiful appearance. [Cf. ArubyabluramlihagrbaSikhamasya saundaryyalek- 
ham pa^yantibhih puri viharatab paurasimantinibhib.] 

Erom the description given in verso 10 of tho Calcutta Sahitya-Parishat 
copper-plate inscription of Vi^varupasena, we may well imagine the picture of 
fashionable maidens especially married ladies looking bright and gay with the 
exuberance of their dress and toilet in the evening. The day’s task being 
over the night was presumably the time for merry-making and enjoyment. 
Beferences have already been made to ablution bath performed by men and 
women alike in the waters of rivers like Gohga or Jatoda. Similarly we find 
mention of tanlts and lakes where ladies used to take their bath. The 
Bhuvane^var inscription of Bhatta-Bhavadeva (verse 26) refers to such a 
tanlc in the Ba^a country. The surface of its water is said to have been ^ 
filled with the reflections of lotus-faces of beautiful damsels engaged in bath. 
[Cf. Yenakari jalaiayab parisarasnatabhijatahgana valctrabjaprativimba- 
mugdhamadhupi, etc.] Large tanks were often excavated in the vicinity of 
temples by pious donors so that men and women might take their bath and 
visit the sacred shrine. ^ Thus the Mahabodhi inscription records that during 
the 26th regnal year of King Dharmapala (line 7) Ke^va, son of the stone- 


WOMEN IN THE EARLY INSCRIPTIONS OF BENGAL 267 

mason Uj jvala, set up an image of fomr-faced Mahadeva (line 3) and excavated 
a loiTge tanic at the expense of three thousand dramTn n. coins (lin§ 6), The 
Deopata inscription (verse 29) tells us that King Vijayasena excavated a large 
tank in the vicinity of the temple of Pradyumnesvara. Citizens’ wives with 
^^uslrs on their breasts are described as plunging themselves into its water 
for taking their bath. [Cf. jalamagna-paurangana-stanainamadasaurabho- 
ohchalitachanoharlkaih sarah— verse 29, lines 26-27.] In the Tejpur copper- 
plate inscription of King Vanamala of Assam we have a similar description 
of the river Lauhitya or Brahmaputra. [Cf. ]Vra]]adv ilnsiTiiTn inTiftlra.?a,fia- 
tate^lishtamadapahliavilasugandhambhasa vesahganabhiriva nanabharapa- 

sobhitaprakatavayavabhirvalakumarikabhiriva Kv a,uatkinkini>thiVi 

varastribhiriva chamaradharhiibhi etc., Padmanath Bhattacharya, op, 

cit., pp. 63-64.] Fashionable ladies were thus in the habit of using musk and 
other aromatics like camphor, sandal, etc. for their decoration. [Cf. Karpurai- 
riva puri(tam) nialayajakshodairivalepitam — verse 8 of Krshnadvarika 
Temple inscription.] The use of camphor is already referred to and we have 
reference in the Dcopara inscription (verse 31) to the use of sandal powder. 
The same inscription also speaks of heavenly damsels with saffron lines on 
their breasts (verse 12) indicating thereby the use of red paints by ladies. 
[Inscriptions of Bengal, p. 52, n. 5.] 

The existence of courtesans is also attested by the evidence furnished 
► by these inscriptions. In verse 9 of the Bdilpur copper-plate inscription of 
Kesavasena and verse 10 of the Calcutta Sahitya-Parishat copper-plate 
inscription of Visvarupasena, we find mention of the dulcet music arising from 
the anidets-worn by courtesans in the evening [of. Sayanx vesavilasinijanara^an- 
manjii'amanjusvanaih]- Kings and wealthy people thus seem to have enjoyed 
the sight of dancing courtesans. There are references moreover to the employ- 
ment of ‘devadasls’ or female attendants in temples and shrines. These were 
the dancing girls engaged in the service of the deity of a temple and as such 
formed a musical choir. The Bhuvanesvar inscription of Bhatta-Bhavadeva 
(verse 30) speaks of the temple of the god Harimedlias (i.e. Vishnu) being 
endowed by King Bhavadeva -with hundred damsels having eyes like those 
of young deer, who created the delusion that they were celestial nymphs 
taking rest on earth. These maidens are described as being the meeting-hall 
of music, dalliance and beauty. [Cf. Etasmai Harimedhase vasumativi&anta- 
vidyadharivibhrantindadhatih fetam sa hi dadau sarangasavidrsah 1 
Dagdhasyogradrsa drsaiva disatih kamasya samjivanam kaxah kamijanasy'a 
sangamagrham sangitakeli^yam |1 ] The Deopara inscription of Vijayasena 
)► (verso 30) similarly informs us that the temple of the god Pradyumnesvara 
was provided with hundred beautiful females the oharms of whose body 
were enhanced by the wearing of jewellery. [Cf. Ratnalamkrtibhirwiseshita- 
vapuh sobhah ^atam subhruvafi.] From the epithet — ‘ Padmavatichara^ia- 
charanachakravarti ’ some scholars are led to believe that Padmavati, the 
wife of the celebrated poet Jayadeva hCsra, was before-her marriage a member 
of a choir party engaged in the service of a temple. 

17 ... 


258 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


The Deopaxa inscription of Vijayasena (vorse 31, line 28) refers to 
variegated silk olotli [cf. Chitrakshaumevacharninia]. The Amgachhi copper- 
plate inscription of Vigrahapala III (verso 8) speaks of variegated garments 
shining with the lustre of precious stones [of. ratna-dyutikhaohita-chatuk ^ 
sindhu-chitramsukayak]. The use of girdles or waist-chains by ladies may^ 
also be inferred from the use of such images as — ‘nanambonidhi-mokhalasya 
jagatah’ [Badal Pillar inscription, verse 16], ‘chaturjjaladhimekhalam 
maliim’ [grants of Sasahka, p. 121 of Indian Culture, Vol. IX, No. 1] and 
‘bhupithamavadhi ra^anabharanam’ [Badal Pillar inscription, vorse 13, 
JiTiR 14]. The use of bracelets may also be guessed from the use of such 
images as — *yavat kflrmmo jaladhivalaj'am bhutadhatrim vibharti’ [Ghoshrawa 
inscription of Viradeva, verso 16, line 18], The Naihati copper-plate inscrip- 
tion of Vallalasena (vorse 8) gives the following description of Vijayasena : 
‘From the necldaces of the deer-eyed ones (i.e. ladies) of his enemies who were 
roaining in forests, pearls dropped and wore strewn over the earth being 
marked by the collyrium mixed with the tears from their eyes. ’ These pearls 
were picked' up by men of the Pulinda tribe mistaking them to bo gunja seeds 
for their wives might be pleased with necklaces of oven gunja seeds. [Cf. 
Bhramyantlnam vananto yadari-mrgadrsaih haramuktaphalanichchhinna- 
Idrpani bhtimau nayanajala-milat-kajjalairUanchchhitani I Yatrachchinvanti 
darbhakshatacharapatalasrgviliptani gunjasrag-bhiishii-ramj'a-ramastanakala' 
^aghana^lesha-lolah Pulinda-k II ] The simplicity of w'omen’s dress in rural 
areas and lonely forests thus stood in strange contrast wdth the rich ostenta- 
tion of citizens' wives and daughters. The simple lotus-ear-omament is 
referred to in verse 27 of the Bhuvane^var inscription of Bhatta-Bhavadeva 
[cf. Lilavatamsotpalam]. The Deopara inscription of Vijayasena (verse 23), 
an eulogy composed by the poet Umapati-dhara, gives a faithful picture 
of society when it deals with the effects produced by the charity of the Iting. 
‘Through his grace the Brahmanas versed in the Vedas have become the 
possessors of so much wealth that their wives have to be trained by the 
wives of the to'wnspeople (to recognize) pearls, pieces of emerald, silver 
coins, jewels and gold from their similaiity respectivoty with seeds of cotton, 
lea'VBs of daka, bottlegourd flowers, the developed seeds of pomegranates 
and the blooming flowers of the creepers of pumpkin-gourd (Beninkasa 
Cerifera).’ [Cf. Muktak karppasa'vijairmmarakata^akalaih ^akapatrairalabu 
pushpai rupyani ratnam parinatibhidurairkukshibliirddadimanam 1 Kush- 
mandivallaripam ■vilcasitakusumaih kanchanam nagaribhik ^ikshyante yat 
prasadardvahuvibhavajushaih yoshitak frotriyanam || — ^Inscriptions of 
Bengal, pp, '48 and 64.] In verse 31 of the same inscription mention is also ■ 

made of string of sapphires (mahantlaratnakshamS.la) and lovely pearls 
besides emeralds. 

The simplicity of ordinary women is also evident from contemporary 
literature. Mention has already been made of lotus-ear ■•omament. There is 
also evidence to believe that ordinary women, even respectable ladies of the 
ighest Brahmin caste, would use ear-rings made of green palm leaves. This is 



WOMEN IN THE BAELY INSOETPTIONS OF BENGAL 269 

ovidont from tlio following description of Dlioyi, the antlior of ‘ Pavanadiita ’ : 
‘Gangavichiplutaparisarah sandliamalavataiiiso yasyatuclichaistvayi rasa- 
mayo vismayarii Suhmade^a^ I Yafra srotrabharapapadavim bhfimidevanga- 
nanam talipatram navasafiikalakomalam yatra yati |) ’ There are lots of 
’faferences to the cultivation of botel-nnts [line 52 of Edilpur copper-plate of 
Kesavasena, Madanapada copper-plate of ViSvarupasena, line 45, etc.] but 
there is no direct mention'of the practice of chewing betels. It appears from 
a passage written by Govardhana Aoharyya that in backward rm’al areas the 
advanced modes and ways of fashionable civic maidens were thought to be 
the most unwelcome things for women to follow. [Of. ‘ Rjuna nidhehi charapau 
parihara salclii nikhilanagaracharam i lha dakiniti pallipatili katakshehpi 
dandayati || ’] The contemporary poet Parana gives a description of poor 
village women. The peasants have gone to the fields leaving their homes at 
dawn and their women are hastily commg home after finishing their business in 
the village mart before their husbands’ return. [Of. Etasta divasantabhaskara- 
diso dhavanti pauranganafr skandhapraskhaladamiukanchaladhrtivyasanga- 
vaddhadaralj I Prataryatakrshivalagamabhiya protplutya vartmachchhido 
hat^ lcrash 3 'ai)adarthamiilya kalana vj^agranguligranthayab 11 ] An account 
of an average well-dressed Bengalee woman is given in the following lines: 
‘Vasafr sulcshmam vapushi bhOjayoh kanchani changadaOTir malagarbhah 
surabhimasrpairgandhatailailj Sikhapdalj. 1 karpottamse navaSasikalanirmalam 
talapatrain ve&ib kesham na harati mano Vangavarangananam U ’ With 
this wo may compare the description of the mild decoration of village women 
as given by Chandrachandra: ‘Bhale Kajjalabindurinduldrapaspardlii mrna- 
lankuro dorvallishu salatujjhenilaphalottaihsa^cha karnatithifi 1 Dhammillasti- 
lapallavabhishavanasnigdhah svabhavadayam panthan mantharayatyanagara- 
vadhuvargasya vesagrahah 11 ’ [Sukumar Sen, op. cit., pp. 61-55.] 

The cultivation of classical Hindu music bj' men and women alike seems 
to have attained a high degree of excellence during this period. In a work 
called Sek^ubhodaya wonderful musical feats are ascribed to the female artists 
of Bengal. The most conspicuous among them was Vidyutprabha, the 
daughter-in-lq.w of the well-known actor Gailgoka whose verses are recorded in 
the Saduktikar^amrta. She is said to have charmed the audience bj' her 
musical feats in the court of King Lalcshmanasena. Another remarkable 
female artist of that age was Padmavati, the wife of the poet Jayadeva Mi&’a, 
the author of Gitagovinda. Along with her husband who was also a musician 
of repute, she received honom'S from King Lakshmapasena by her superb 
musical display before the assembled audience in the royal court. Bu^ana 
blifra, the celebrated musician of Orissa, who came for a musical duel to the 
court of Lakshma^iasena, was thus put out of countenance by Jayadeva and 
his wife. {Ibid., pp. 46-47.] 

In the field of cottage-industry, namely, spuming, weaving and embroi- 
dery, we owe a great deal to the efforts of women in Bengal. Bengal has 
always been noted for her textiles. The fine muslins of Dacca have at a 
later age given her an undying fame. Her jute and cotton fabrics were 



260 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


largely in vogue throughout the length and breadth of Northern India. In 
Varnaratnakara of Jyotirisvara, a work of the fourteenth century A.D., we 
find mention of some of these fine garments of Bengal like ‘Megha-udumbara , 
‘Laksnnvilasa’, ‘Dvaravasini’, ‘Silahati’, ‘Gafigori’, etc. The use of fine 
garments was especially confined among womenfolk who would themselves^ 
make threads of cotton for this purpose. This is clear from a verse of 
^ubhanka : ‘ Karpasasthi prachayanichita nirdhanasrotriyanam ye^m 

vatyapravitatakuti pranga^anta vabhuvuh I Tatsaudhapam parisarabhuvi- 
tvatprasadadidanim kridayuddhachchhidurayuvatiharaihuktah patanti il ’ 


NEICKHAMJVIA 

By 

Dr. P. V. Bapat, M.A., Ph.D. 

1. There is a long-standing idiffercncc in views among scholars as regards 
the Sanskrit rendering of the Pali word ‘nelckhamma*. Prof. Bcndall, the 
Editor of ^iksasamuccaya, adds a note on that word (p. 306) that in spite 
of Rhys Davids and Oldenberg (Vin. Texts i. 104, n. 1) who seem to mis- 
understand Itivuttaka, para. 72, nekkhamma seems to be connected with 
kram and not kama. Bumouf interpreted it as ‘naiskarmya’ (Lotus, 334). 
Rhys Davids and Oldenberg have, on the other hand, maintained that the 
Pali word ‘nelckhamma’ is neither ‘naiskarmya’ nor ‘naislcramya’ but ‘nais- 
kSmya’. Let us further examine this word and see if we can tlirow new light 
on the interpretation or the historical changes in the interpretation of this 
word. 

2. Early Canonical Texts.-^li we go to the first four Nikayas, or to 
the earliest Pali texts like the Suttanipata, we find that the word * nekkhamma ’ 
is used as contrasted with the word ‘kama’. Wo find, over and over again, 
the famous expression ‘kdmandm adinavam okaram sanlcilesam nehkhamme 
anisamsam pakasesi’ (D. i. 110, Ambatthasutta ; i. 148, ICutedantasutta; ii. 41, 
Mahapadanasutta; Vin. i. 18; M. i. 379, Upalisutta). Similarly, other uses of 
the word in expressions like kama-vitakka and nekkhamma-vitaklca (M. i. 116; 
Iti. 82), or in expressions used as contrasted with kama (M. iii. 130; A. iii. 245),' 
or in the following lines from the Suttanipata — 

kamesu achnavam disva nekkhamraam datthu khemato (Sn. 424) 

kamesu vinaya gedham nekkhammam datthu khemato (Sn. 1094) 
leave no doubt whatsoever that the word was used as opposed to kama. In 
fact, in some passages like the Itivuttaka 61, D. iii. 275, we find that the word 
is even defined as ‘kamanam etam nissarapam yadidam nekkhammapi’: 
nekkhamma means escape or deliverance from kama. So also in Patisam- 
bhida i. 46-47, we have ‘uBkkhammena kamacohandassa pahanam’; i.e., by 
nekkhamma, one destroys the passions of life. 


NBKKHA3M5IA 


261 


3. Later Ganonical Texts, — Gradually, it appears, the word came to 
have a %vider meaning. Vihhanga 86 says that all good things are included 
in the category of nelddiamma (Sabbe pi kusala dhamma Nekkhamma-dhatu). 
Nekkhamma came to be interpreted in the sense of renunciation or going away 

^from worldly life. In Buddhavamsa ii. 130, we have 
Nekkhammabhimukho hohi bhavato parimuttiya. 

In- Gariy apitaka (2. 4. 1 and 2) also we read 

Bhavam disvana bhayato nekkhammam n.b biuikkbamiTn 

* * * * 

Sa pi vatte anapekkha nekkhammam abhinikkhami 
where the idea is of going into a life of renunciation. We further notice that 
the word came to be used as a technical term in the sense of paramita, per- 
fection of one of the ten vii-tues or good qualities, which came to assume more 
and more importance in Buddhism along -with the growth of Bodhisattva- 
doctrine in Mahayana Buddhism. Neklchamma or a life of renunciation 
came to be accepted in Pali texts as the third Paramita, although in Maha- 
yanism it did not assume that rani:. All the same, the life of renunciation 
was commended and it was always preferred by a religiously-minded person 
to a life of the world. In fact, it came to be recognized as an essential thing 
for the attaimnent of enlightenment. See, for instance, the following verse 
from Buddha-^ramsa (2. 128) ; 

Nekkhamme paramim gaccha yadi bodhim pattum icchasi. 

Thus in these late canonical works, the word seems to be used as opposed to 
a ‘life in a house’. 

4. Post-canonical Texts and Commentaries. — ^This change in the inter- 
pretation is further confirmed by post-canonical texts and commentaries. 
In Nettipakarana 53, and Milinda 285, we find‘Cha gehanissitani somanassani’ 
given as opposed to ‘Cha nekkhammanissitani’. Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhi- 
magga (3. 128, Prof. Kosambi’s Devanagari edition) also says: ‘Nekkhamma- 
ajjhasaya ca Bodliisatta gharavase dosadassavino’, ‘The Bodhisattas whose 
heart is set upon nekkhamma see defects in their residence at home’. The 
Commentaries also reveal a tendency to interpret the word as ‘an escape’, 
though they are careful to show that it is an escape from ‘pleasures of the 
world’. For instance, the Commentary on the Majjhima, sutta No. 19, explains 
(MCm. ii. 79) nekldiamma--vitald:a as kamehi nissato nekkhamma-patisam- 
yutto vitaldco. Further, it is said in the comment on the same sutta (MCm. 
ii. 82) : nelddiamman ca kamehi nissatam sabbam kusalam. In another place 

^ (MCm. iv. 197), we read nekkhammena explained as kamato nissateguqena — 

■ kamato nissatgune thitena puggalena. MCto. iv. 158, as well as SilCm. iii. 171, 
explain neldchamma as kamato nikkhantassa sukham. In aU these cases 
escape from Hama is emphasized. But, side by side with these explanations, 
we also find as the explanation of nekkhamma ‘renunciation’. DCm. ii* 
471-73 (on Eutadantasutta) says : nekkhamme anisainsam pakasesi, pabbajjdya 
gunam pakasesi ti attho. Similarly, ACm. iv. 204 also says : nekkhamme cittam 


262 


B. C. liAW VOTiUMB 


pakkiiandati ti pabbajjaya cittam arafnmanavasona pakkliandati. Hero tlie 
word ‘pabbajja’ clearly occurs. 

It has been already remarked above that, ultimately the word came to 
include all good things (sabbc pi Icusala dhamma). So it was also used in the 
sense, as suited each case, of anagSmiviagga: 

‘Ettha nekkhamman ti anagamimaggo adhippoio. So hi sabbaso 
kamanam nissaranam. ’ The Commentary on Dhp. 272 gives the same explana- 
tion as anagamisukha of nckkhamma. In other contexts, it is also interpreted 
as nibbana : ACm. iii. 242 (on A. 1 47) and Viman avatthu Commentary (p. 348) 
interpret the word as Nibbana (Nibbane khemabhavam disva). In another 
place, it is interpreted as Nibbana as well as the Path leading to Nibbana: 

Nibbanan ca nibbanagamin ca patipadam khoman ti disva (SnCm. on 
Sn 1098) ; or, in the sense of First Trance: 

Idha nekkhammam nama asubhesu pathamaijhannin (ACm. iii. 321). 
Later commentaries such as on Dhammapada further extend the scope of this 
word. See, for instance, the following: 

Nekkhamman ti kilesupasamam nibbanarntim pana sandhay’etam 
vuttam (Cm. on Dh. 181) 

where the word seems to include even the delight in Nibbana which allays 
corruptions. Here it rejects the interpretation of ‘pabbajja’ (ettha pabbajja- 
nekkhamman ti na gahetabbam). 

Dhammapala also in his various commentaries refers to different inter- 
pretations. For example, in his comment on Therigatha 339, he explains 
nekkhamma as pabbajja as well as Nibbana (pabbajjam nibbanam yeva 
pihayami, patthayami). In his commentary on Cariyapitaka (2. 4. 1-2), 
he explains the word as three-fold (tividha) — (i) nibbana, (ii) quiescence and 
insight (samatha and vipassana) as means for the attainment of Nibbana, and 
(iii) a life of remmeiation as the means for the attainment of samatha and 
vipassana. 

So we see that even in Pali sources, the word began to change its conno- 
tation from the time of later canonical texts, such as Buddhavamsa, Cariya- 
pitaka, Vibhanga, and through the early commentaries where the interpreta- 
tion is based upon the antithesis of kama as well as upon the fancied derivation- 
from a similarly sounded root nikkhama (nislcram), it finally came to be 
interpreted in the sense of all good things such as pabbajja, anagamimagga, 
nibbana, samatha and vipassana and the delight in nibbana. 

5. Buddhist SansTcrit Tixts .^ — It must be noted that in Buddhist Sanskrit 
texts, the Pali word is rendered as ‘naiskramya*. Mahavastu (iii. 42) has the 
following stanza: 

Sprsayam naisicramya sukhani aprthagjanasevitam 
Bhiksu vi^vasamapadye aprapte asravaksaye. 

This stanza like the corresponding verse of Dhammapada (272) has nothing 
to show the interpretation in which the word was understood at that time. 
But mark the following passage which corresponds to the oft-repeated Pah 
passage quoted above in para. 2 (that from Amba-t-^asutta of the Dighanikaya) ; 



UEKKHAMMA 


263 


Danakatham, Makatham, svargakatham, punyakatham, punyavipaka- 
kathain, kamesu bhayain, ok&raiQ, sainkileSaiii, TOoisfcrcwM/airuSain- 
savyavadanam samprakaSayati. (Mabavastu iii. 357.) 

Here there is no doubt that the word ‘naidiramya’ corresponds to the Pali 
I nekkhamnia and that is used, as in the Pali passage, in opposition to 
kama, that is to say, in the same sense as ‘naiskamya See also the following : 

Naisla-amyam anuvarnayanti kamesu dosadar^inah (Mahavastu, i. 107, 
1. 3) where the antithesis between kama and naisk&mya is quite clear. 

, Another stanza from the same work suggests a similar contrast: 

l§m'o ca bhavati drdhavi'ata apramatto na kamabhoge suratim janeti 
naiskramyato bhavati adinacitto choretva jalam jinacetiyesu ^ 

(Mahavastu ii. 392.) 

‘Whosoever offers a net to the shrine of the Conquerors becomes a hero, of 
firm vows, watchful, finds no delight in pleasures of the world and is not cast 
down because of ‘naisltramya’. ‘Here also we note the contrast between 
enjoyment of pleasures and naiskramya. In Asvaghosa’s Saundarananda 
xii. 21, also, 

Adya te saphalam janma labhodya sumahams tava 

Yasya kamarasajnasya naisloramyayotsukam manah, 
the contrast between kamarasajna and naiskramj^a is suggested. 

So it -will be seen that in spite of the /om of the word ‘naiskramya’, the 
idea implied by the word is the same as ‘naiskamya’. 

■ It is also interesting to note that Dr. N. P. Chalcravarti in his L’Udana- 
varga, p. 266, gives, as the Samlmt equivalent of the Pali expression *nek- 
khammupasame rata’ (Dhp. 181), ‘naisk(r)am(y)opasame ratah’, where ‘r’ 
is put in brackets. ' 

As opposed to this sense of naiskamya, we equally find, as in the non- 
canonical Pali texts like the Milinda, Netti, Visuddhimagga, that the word 
is used as contrasted with ‘house’ or ‘a life in a house’. Mahavastu i. 173, 
13 reads 

Hapi ye.dharmah grhaSritas te naiskramyaisrita iti de^ayami; napi ye 
dharma naislCTamya^ritas te grha^ta iti de^ayami. 

Here we see that the word is contrasted with ‘house’. In this very sense, the 
word is used in several passages in Lalitavistara. We hear of ‘ naiskramyakala ’ 
(Lefmann’s ed. of Lalitavistara, pp. 196, 199, 219, 220). We also read of 
‘naiskramyabuddlii’ (p. 170) and ‘naisitramya-mati’ (p. 184). 

We do not, however, find that the Sansicrit texts give other various 
interpretations as in Pali texts. Perhaps, the very orthographical form of the 
Sanslmt word restricted the interpretation to ‘a life of renunciation’. We 
have seen that it was based upon a fancied derivation from the root ‘niskram’. 

6. Tibetan renderings . — Let us see what light is thrown upon this subject 
by Tibetan renderings. In the Tibetan translation of the TJdanavarga xxi. 9, 
we have first two quarters of a stanza corresponding to the first two quarters 


1 Cf. ^ik^samnccaya, 306. 


264 


B. 0. LAW VOLITME 


of Dhp. 181, and we have an expression corresponding to ‘Nekkhammupasame 

rata’. The Tibetan rendering of the same is: 

fies-hhyuA 4i In dga^i-pa dab 

niski'amana npa^ama ratah 

Jaschke in his Tihetan-Englisli Dictionary, p. 148, gives tvm interpretations of 
nes-hhyuh, which all appear to be later. His interpretations are (i) deliverance 
from the round of transmigration , and (ii) knowledge of one’s self, Avhich all 
appear to be secondary or of third remote and do not appear to be supported 
by etymology. In Mahavyutpatti (Sakaki’s edition, No. 0444), the Tibetan 
rendering of ‘kamesu naisla'amyam’ is given os ‘hdod-pa-las spagspa 
which literally interpreted means ‘going away from 
desire’. Another rendering is also given. It is ‘bdod-pahi las spahs-pa 
which means ‘abandonment of desired things’. In 6755* 
the word naiskramya is rendered by ‘nes-]5ar hbyuA-pa B'hich of 

course corresponds to nissarana as said above in the Tibetan rendering of 
Dhp. 181. In 7554, also, it has been rendered by ‘hbym\-pa (“.%=>'«). Thus it 
will be seen that here also the interpretations waver between ‘abandonment 
of desire’ and'remmciation or going out of one’s house’. 

7. C'R.mcse sources. — Let us now turn to Chinese soxirces. In the Chinese 
version (Madhyamagama 32. 96. 7, Ch’angchow edition of 1911) of Upalisutta, 
No. 56 of the Majjhimanikaya, we clearly have the words ‘wu yu’ 'IS®: 
which mean ‘without desire’, used for the word ‘nekkhamma’ in the passage 
which corresponds to the one quoted above at the begiiming of para. 2. In 
the version of the Ambatthasutta (2. 21) of the Dighanikaya, vol. i, it is 
translated by ch’u yao (Dirghagama, Suchow edition, 1887, 13. 22a. 10). 

The same Chinese rendering is also found in the Chinese version of the. 
Kutadantasutta (Dirghagama 15. 266. 1). In the Chinese version of the Maha- 
padanasutta (D. ii. 41), it is rendered by ch’u li ‘going out’. The 

same rendering is also found in the Cie-t’o-tao-lun (4. 26. 10; 4. 36. 1; also 
see my ‘Vimuttimagga and Visuddhimagga’, p. 44), the Chinese translation of 
Upatissa’s Vimuttimagga. Upatissa is further very explicit about the inter- 
pretation of this word. He clearly points to the two interpretatioxis: 
(i) ‘leaving the house and practising good things (kusala) ; and (ii) being away 
from desires of sense’. In another place (8. 76. 4) where the word ‘neldchamma’ 
is used as one of the ten paramitas or perfections, the Chinese rendering 
is merely Ch’u Prof. P. C. Bagchi in his ‘Deux Lexiques Sanslcrit 
Chinois’, vol. ii, p. 480, gives only ch’u as the Chinese rendering of 
nikkara, which is evidently niScara, that is to say niski'ama. In the Maha- 
yana work Dadabhumika-sutra ’ (1. XJU), we come across the word ‘naisltra- 
myabari for which the different Chinese, renderings given by translators of 


nekkhamma 


266 


successive periods from tlie third to the tenth century A.D. are .enlisted by 
K-ahder in his Glossary (p. 06). It is interesting to note that none of the 
renderings given there can be interpreted to mean ‘without desire’. Most 
of them seem to favour tlic interpretation of renunciation or leaving one’s 
house. 

8. Elymology. — Cliildors in liia Pali-English Dictionary (p. 264, col. 1) 
has a note on this word, in which ho discusses the etymology of it. He refers 
to both the etymologies of the word, one derived from kama and the other 
from iiiskram. Ho decides in favour of the latter, because he finds an insuper- 
able difficulty in the aspiration in the word nekkhamma to allow him to derive 
it from naifkiimya. The form in that case should have been, he sirgues, 
nckkamma and not- nekkhamma. But on closer examination of similar 
words, it will bo found that no diffictilty is really to be felt. Bor, it is the 
peculiarity of the Pali-Prakrits that we have the asphated sounds in several 
Prakrit words where the original Sanskrit words do not justify any. Compare, 
for instance, Cariyapitaka, 2. 6. 6: 

Dhanikehi bhito tasito pakkhanto' ham mahanadim 
whore the word ‘pakkhanta’ corresponds to Sanskrit ‘prakranta’ and still 
we have the aspiration in the Pali word. So also we should note the Pali 
word ‘khanti’ ‘liking’ (ayam amhakam khanti, this is what we- like), which 
stands for the- Sanskrit word ‘kanti’ ‘liking’ from the rootkam, to like, to 
covet. See also note on p. 117 of my book ‘ Vimuttimagga and Visuddhi- 
maggn’, in coiuiection with nikkhanti or nekkhamma. Compare also the Pali 
form ‘sakkhati’ which is found side by side with ‘sakkoti’ from the Sanskrit 
root Sak to bo able. For other examples of this peculiarity in Pali, see 
R. P. Cbaudhari’s article on ‘The Philology of Pali Language’ in the Indian 
Historical Quarterly, vol. xviii (1942), p. 301. 

To prove that the word naisliramya is used for nekkhamma in the sense 
of dispassionateness (naiskamya), we have the following lines from the Maha- 
vastu i. 293: ‘ 

Ye jruktayoga inanasa succhandasa naislcramyino Gautama-^asanasmim 
which corj'esponds to the first two lines of Suttanipata 228: 

Ye suppayutta manasa dalhena nikhdmino (vl. nikkliamino, nikamino) 
Gotamasasanasmiip. 

Here it is iiroved beyond doubt that the word nikkliamino or nikkamino or 
nikamino is rendered by naiskramyino. So when there is an actual use of 
this word, in an important Buddhist Sanslirit text, all imagined difficulties 
arc cleared awa5\ 

9. Conclusion, — Thus from the foregoing, we conclude (i) that the early 
canonical texts use the word nekkhamma in its primary sense of dispassionate- 
ness (naiskamya) ; (ii) that in later canonical texts it came to be used in the 
secondary sense of ‘renunciation, or leaving one’s house’ ; (iii) that in post- 
canonical Pali works and Pali’ Commentaries tliis later interpretation came to 
be not only confirmed and acceiited but a tendency to connect the word also 
with nikkhama (niskram) is noticed with the result that in commentatorial 



266 


B. 0. I/AW VOI/tTME 


explanations the word is connected with both kama as well as nilckhama; 
(iv) that when Buddhist Sanskrit works -wore translated from the Pali-Pralttit 
originals or when they came to be written in the original, the real etymology 
of the word was forgotten and the Buddhist Sanskrit word‘naiskramya’ based 
on a fancied derivation from niskram came in vogue; (v) that the word came'^ 
to be extended to all good things (laisala dhamma) including renunciation, 
the state of being an Anagami, nibbana, or the way leading to nibbana such 
as that of samatha (quiescence) and vipassana (insight), or even the delight 
in nibbana; (vi) that although in later Buddhist Sanskrit works the meaning 
seems to be restricted to ‘remmciation’, the old Buddhist Sanskrit works 
like the Mahavastu and Saundarananda show that the old interpretation, of 
the word in the sense of dispassionateness (naiskamya) still lingered on; and 
(vii) that finally the word nekkhamma as on equivalent of naiskamya can also 
be philologically explained. 

Thus it will be clear that an attempt on the part of some scholars to 
'interpret a word or an expression in mere reliance upon Buddhist Sanskrit 
works, without referring to Pali-Pralmt originals, is bound to fail. One example 
of this kind has been already dealt with by the present mriter in his article 
on ‘Tayin, Tayi, Tadi’ inD. R. Bliandarkar Commemoration Volume (pp. 24&- 
258) ; a second in another article on ‘Saptanga-supfatisthita’ in the projected 
volume in commemoration of Prof. Radhakumud Mukerjee; and a third is 
shown here in tliis volume, also a commemoration volume, in honour of the 
celebrated scholar Dr. B. 0. Law. 


HYDRO-ELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH INDIA 

‘ By 

Mr. G. Kubiyan, Head of the Department of Geography, University of 

I Madras, and Mr. V. P. Kannan Nair 

The characteristic feature of hydro-electric development in South India ' 
is its recency. Except the Sivasamudram plant in Mysore which was opened 
in the beginning of this century, all the others have sprung up during the 
last twelve years. Since 1930, there has been a phenomenal development of 
power generation in South India, and if the war had not interfered, the position 
today would probably have been even better. 

The total installed capacity of the hydro-electric installations, including 
those under construction, now stands at 183,200 kW, of which 102,000 is 
in the province of Madras, 72,000 in Mysore and 9,000 in Travancore. By 
extending these schemes when necessary, Madras can produce 146,750 kW, 
Mysore 131,200 kW and Travancore 30,000 kW, thus giving a grand total of 
307,950 kW. 

The Sivasamudram plant, the first of its kind in the East and the power 
behind the industrial progress of Mysore, was opened in 1902. Assisted by 
Knshnaraja Sagar and the Shimsha station, it is now in a position to produce 



HYDEO-EIiECTBlO DEVELOPMENT DT SOUTH INDIA 


267 


42,000 kW. Further, Mysore has in addition the Jog fall project under 
construction. In Madras, the Pykara and Mettur schemes vdth a total 
capacity of 81,260 kW are now in working condition. The former was opened 



Belief Map of South India 

in 1932 and the latter in 1937. It is interesting to realize that Mettur com- 
bines irrigation with power generation. The Papanasam scheme of the Madras 
Govermnent is still in the construction staged and seeks to utilize a fall of about 


1 It has, however, commenced operation since August 1944. 








268 


Ji. C. IjKVJ VOLUME 


330 feet in the flow of the Tamhiapami river by the construction of the 
Tambrapami dam. The Tallivasnl scheme of Travancoro harnesses a fall of 
the Mudrapuzha, a tributary of the Pcriyar. The schbino , diverts the water 
from the weir at Munnar (4,750'), takes it through a tunnel and loads it into a 
forebay at an elevation of 4,710'. Prom there, the water is let do^vn througli)r 
two penstock lines, to the power house situated at an altitude of 2,700' giving a . 
lioad of about 1 ,990'. TJio station was started in 1 94 0 and generates 9,000 kW. 

The main geographical factors which condition the development of hydro- 
electric power generation arc topography and rainfall. The mountains of 
South India fringe the west and cast coasts, with the plateau between them 
sloping gently eastwards. The Westem Ghats are much the more important 
because of their greater height and their unbroken nature. In South India, 
three well-marked areas of mountain topography stand out prominently. 
They are: (i) the Nilgiri hills and the western ranges of the Mysore plateau; 
(ii) the Anamalai, Palni and Cardamom hills; and (iii) the Vizagapatam 
Agency tracts. The rivers that rise from these regions flow through regions 
of very rugged topography before they reach the plains, with the result that 
there are numerous falls and cataracts in their mountain courses which favour 
the development of power. 

The distribution of rainfall at a power site is of fundajuental significance 
in its choice. The upper reaches and the slopes of the Westem Ghats, from 
where the main rivers that are harnessed for electricity rise, have a longer 
wet season than anywhere else in India. It extends from June to December, 
comprising the period of the south-west monsoon from June to September and 
the retreating monsoon from October to December. The so-called dry season 
is only of five months’ duration, from January to May, but even this is often 
interrupted by thunder showers, which are likely to be heavy in the extreme 
south-west. The main season of rains is during the period of the south-west 
monsoon which brings about 100 to 150* of rain and sometimes even 200*, as at 
Peermade.2 The north-east monsoon begins in October and the Cardamom 
hills in the south and the higher parts of the Western Ghats intercept them 
to give a subsidiary maximum of rainfall in October. The wet season in these 
regions is prolonged in both the directions, a pre-monsoon rainfall in April 
and May and a post-monsoon rainfall in October and November. 

The reliability of rainfall is of greater significance than the actual amount 
of rainfall itself. The coefficient of the reliability of rainfall at any place 
can be roughly determined by the ratio of the average rainfall of the 
ten driest years on record, to the mean annual rainfall. On the West Coast, 
Nilgiris and the Agency tracts, this ratio is very high and is approximately 0'8. 
This is due partly to the heavy rainfall in these regions, partly to the extended 
season of rains and partly also because the rainfall is as a result of both the 
monsoons. Bombay , on the other hand, receives all its rain during the season 
of the south-west monsoon; the peculiarly favourable conditions of rainfall 

. . ^ favoured sites, the rainfali may be well over 400' as at Mukurti ridge^tation 

in the Nilgiris, or, at Lakkidi, near Vayitiri in Malabar. 



HYDRO-EIiBOTBIO development in south INDIA 


269 


give South India decided advantages over Bombay and this is reflected in the 
storage requirements for hydro-electric development.^ Even in Madras, the 



Hainfall Map of South India 

rivers show seasonal variation of discharge, e.g. the Pykara river — 20,000 
cusecs in July and 15 in May. In order to keep the hydro-electric plant 

» The storage per kilowatt of capacity in million cubic feet for the Pykara plant, is 0‘03 
while it is 0’24 in the case of the Andlira Valley Power Supply Co., 0'21 in the Tata Hydro-electric 
Power Supply .and 0‘19 in the Tata Power Company, Ltd. Thus the storage requirements of 
South India are only ^ to } of what they are in Bombay. 



270 


B. 0. LAW VOLUMK 


working throughout the year, the discharge curve should ho straightened out. 
The usually adopted device linown as monsoon storage is to store the excess 
monsoon water in a reservoir and lot it out bj' a regulated sluice, so as to 
give a uniform continuous discharge throughout tho year. It is obvious 
that where the wet season is prolonged, tho dimensions and hence the cost^ 
of the storage reservoir need not be so large as in a place wdth a shorter wet 
season. Even the Pjdcara which has not the host features of rainfall distribu- 
tion in comparison with the Pallivasal or Sivasamudram projects is very much 
better than any of tho hydro-electric schemes in Bombay. - 



On the basis of slope and rainfall which are tho geographic factors that 
delimit the occurrence of water power. South India may he divided into 
three regions. The Anamalais, the Nilgiri hills and the western parts of 
Mysore plateau are the most favourable regions; the Cardamom hills and the 
Palnis come next, while the Vizagapatam Agency tracts are the least favoured. 

■It is not every potential water power site that is worthy of development 
Certain economic factors also play a determining r 61 e. The most important 



Map of Into showing developed Power 

The amount of power generated is approximately proportional to the volume of the cube : 
A unit cube of side represents 100 kW of instaUed capacity. Coal and oil energy are con- 
verted into kW years by taking 6 tons of coal and 4-3 tons of oil respectively for 1 kW year. 

Oube marked coal stands for coal power. 

„ oil „ oil „ 

Circled cube stands for water power. 



HYDBO-ELBOTaiC DEVELOPMENT IN SOTTTH INDIA 


271 


of them are: (1) the absence of competition from other sources of power in 
the area, (2) the nearness of market for the hydro-electric power,- and (3) the 



Availability of Water Power 

wealth of the market. It is well known that South India has neither coal nor 
oil. Thermal electric plants depending on imported coal, or oil, are working 
in South India in a few areas which have the advantage of location near a 




272 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


port, to wliicji the fuel can bo cheaply transported. War conditions have 
made the availability of both coal and oil very difficult and many of the 
power stations like those of Madras are finding it necessary to curtail their 
supplies to the consumers. How much better it would have been if the capital 
of the Province was linked to Mettur I And indeed, hydro-electric power? 
comes to within a stono-throw of the city of Madras. Probably vested 
interests were too dominant. Even in times when the prices of oil and coal 
are normal and transport charges have not had the terrible gallop towards a' 
peak that is characteristic of war-time conditions, it is found that hydro- 
electricity is generally cheaper than thermal electricity. Actual figures sho\^ 
that the total annual cost per kilowatt hour of output in a hydro-electric plant 
in South India is much less than in a thermal electric plant. But it must be 
admitted that the initial cost of construction of the water plant is very high 
and especially so, as there is need for storage reservoirs. This however is, as 
has been shown, at a minimum in South India. There are other mitigating 
factors like the availability of cement (at Madhukarai) and iron (at Bhadravati) 
which reduce the cost of construction of reservoirs. Major Sir Henry Howard, 
the wizard of electricity, has estimated that hydro-electric installations in- 
cluding the cost of high tension transmission should not exceed Rs. 1,000 per 
kilowatt of installed efieotive capacity at high tension distributing points. 
The unit cost of the Madras undertakings are well below that figure. 

South India has a rich and near market for power. The Pykara power is 
used mainly in the cement worlcs at Madhukarai, the textile mills at Coimbatore 
and the tea factories in the Nilgiris, not more than 70 miles away firom 
Glenmorgan. The chief consuming areas in Mysore are Kolar and Bangalore, 
at distances of 90 miles and 60 miles respectively from the generating station 
of Sivasamudram. It is these advantages which have resulted in these schemes 
yielding very good profits, generally more than 8% (for Pykara 8-4% in 
1940-41). The PaUivasal power is being utilized at the Sassoon mills and the 
aluminium works at Alwaye, at a distance of about 60 mfies. 

Political factors are of significance in the development of hydrorelectric 
schemes. Three govemmentSj the Province of Madras' and the Indian States 
of Mysore and Travancore, are developing their resources independently of one 
another. From a geographical point of view it would be more healthy and 
more desirable if all the resources are pooled together. Thus the Pykara, 
Mettur, Sivasamudram, and Sliimsha plants and the Jog project could be made 
into one grid serving the central areas of South India while the PaUivasal 
scheme and the projects of Papanasam and Periyar when completed could 
form another network to supply the needs of the southern areas. It is clearly 
cheaper for South Kanara to get its power from Jog falls rather than from 
Pykara. South Travancore can get its power from Papanasam and a transfer 
of the same quantity can be effected from PaUivasal to South Malabar. This . 
is one more of the many instances where political factors have retarded healthy 
developments on geographic lines. The Mysore government at present is 
contemplating its own grid interconnecting Jog faUs, Sivasamudram and 


HyDBO-EIiECTBlC DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH INDIA 


273 


Shimsha at Bhadravati. The Madras Government has its own scheme with 
.six hydro-electric and three thermal electric plants. The ultimate aim of the 
Madras Government is to maintain an economic balance between indigenous 
water power and imported thermal electric power. The Travancore govern- 
ment has its own scheme.* 

Industrialization of South India was terribly slow in the years before the 
development of the hydro-electric power schemes and the supply of cheap 
electric power has been closely followed up by rapid industrial progress in 
many parts of South India, especially in Mysore State, Coimbatore and 
Travancore. The 45,000 kW of power generated in Mysore is distributed 
among (1) the mining industries (20,000 kW), (2) the textile mills (about 
14,000 kW), and (3) the miscellaneous industries (more than 10,000 kW). 
The characteristic feature of the market in Mysore is its variety and the 
smallness of each unit. Except a few large concerns, the bulk of them employ 
less than 200 labourers. The Mysore government has generally fostered the 
growth of small scale industries wherever possible by providing small blocks 
of power at cheap rates. Power is supplied to small agriculturists for pumping 
purposes at 6 pies per unit, the lowest rate in India. The power demand in 
Mysore for agricultural pumping purposes is growing up at an estimated 
rate of 1,700 h.p. per year. 

Coimbatore district has witnessed, since 1930, a remarkable industrial 
development in the wake of Pykara power. The chief consumers of power m 
1941 were: (1) the textile industry (26,000 kW); (2) the cement works 
(3,600 kW); (3) tea factories (3,900 kW); (4) agricultural piuposes (10,000 kW); 
(6) licensees (20,000 kW); (6) miscellaneous (4,400 kW). At the time of 
the commencement of the Pykara, there were eight textile mills, aU of 
which soon closed down their steam or oil engine plants and changed over 
to the government hydro-electric supply. By 1940, 33 nulls were connected 
to the Pykara system and 4 more were under construction. Many existing 
TnillR increased their power demands. ‘But for the availability of cheap 
hydro-electric power, there would not have been such a rapid development in 
industrial load. Further, the government policy regarding loans for conversion 
and construction, which enabled money to be advanced to both old and new 
mills for the purchase of the electrical equipment and machinery, was also 
responsible for the large and rapid increase in the number of mills erected. 
The low rates for power with the guaranteed maximum charge of 0*66 anna per 
unit, the security of supply and the service features of the government power 
system, all make for an appreciated supply and rapidly growing demand.’® 
Much of the success of the Pykara is certainly due to the grand commercial 
policy adopted by the Madras government imder the guidance of Major Sir 
Henry Howard. The availability of vegetable and mineral raw materials in 
the neighbourhood of Pykara has also been responsible for its growth. The 

4 Since -writing this, I understand from Major Sir Henry Ho-ward that a scheme has already 
been sanctioned to link the povrer systems of Madras and Tra-vancore. 

8 Administration Report for the Electricity Dept., Madras, 1937-3S, p. 4. 

i8 


274 


B. a. LAW VOLUME 


extensions planned to como into existence as late as 1947, had to be 
effected within 5 years of its inception. Many new textile mills were started 
in the vicinity of Coimbatore, which today has consequently become the 
Manchester of South India. The use of electricity for lift irrigation is a 
healthy departure from the time-worn methods, which once for all exploded 
the theory that the peasantry in India is averse to the introduction of any 
scientific improvements in agriculturo. In 1933-34, in Coimbatore there were 
only eight agriculturist consumers connecting 61 h.p., hut by 1937-38, their 
numbers had increased to 970 and they connected about 6,000 h.p. By 
1940-41 there were as many as 2,200 agricultural pumps using Pykara 
power! Again, the development of power at Mettur saw the growth of a 
textile miU and an electro-chemical factory at Mettur itself and the develop- 
ment of cement works at Dalmia Nagar. The Mettur project also has been 
a profitable concern yielding more than 6% on capital outlay within the 
first four years of its origin. 

Pallivasal power has contributed verj^^ largely to tho industrialization of 
Travancore. Power is being used for several industrial purposes lilce the 
aluminium factory, textile mills, tea factories, the ceramic factory. Cochin 
harbour works, etc. and for agricultural purposes lilce the dewatering of the 
Kuttanad region. On a capital outlay of more than 150 lakhs the net profit 
has been less than 2 laklis. The yield has thus been much less than that of 
Pykara or Mettm, but in a few years, there is every prospect of the profits 
mounting up. 

Mr. G. Suiidaram estimates that Madras has a minimum of 250,000 kW 
of power which vmder favourable circumstances can go up to nearly 600,000. 
Mysore has another 200,000 kW and Travancore another 100,000 kW. South 
India has thus a potential total of more than 760,000 kW. 

At one time, S. India which had neither coal nor oil was condemned as 
the one province which had no hopes of industrialization, but the rapid develop- 
ment of water power has, however, opened up a vista of possibilities, thanks to 
Sir C. P. jRamaswamy Aiyar, the founder of the Schemes and Major Sir 
Henry Howard, the person responsible for their execution. Hydro-electric 
power is not well developed in Bengal, Bihar, C.P., Assam and Hyderabad 
because of the occurrence of coal, or oil, in these provinces and the coi^quent 
inability of water power to compete with thermal electric power. 

India is in the same position as that of Japan and Italy. Japan’s resources 
in coal and oil are no better than that of India, but Japan’s developed water 
power is about fom: million h.p., more than five times that of India. India’s 
potential resources in water power are much greater than that of Japan’s. 
The Indian labourer is just as intelligent as the Japanese labourer, and is in 
addition, cheaper. India has an abundance of raw materials like iron ore, 
cotton, jute, etc. which Japan sorely needs. Further more, Tndia. has one of 
the largest home markets in the world. If Japan can become industrialized, 
there is no reason why India should lag behind. For India, the road to 
salvation lies in industrialization and development of power is the sine 



VECiLAaES AlTD TOWNS IN ANCIENT INDIA 


276 . 


non of industrial progress. This war is the golden opportunity for our develop- 
ment and let us hope that it will not be thrown away but utilized to the fullest 
extent by all the industries, by so organizing and developing themselves that 
they will be able to hold their own, in the cut-throat competition that is bound 
^0 be the most significant feature of the post-war economic depression.® 


VILLAGES AND TOWNS IN ANCIENT INDIA 

By 

Pboeessob Db. P. K. Aohabya, I.E.S., M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt. 

It is intended to show from an analysis of the details concerning villages 
and towns described in the standard architectural text, the Manasara-VaMu- 
idslra^ that India has known the art of living here on earth, well and happily, 
and that she ignored no aspect of life in building up a civilization that has 
endured for some three thousand years. 

The villages are classified under eight plans indicated by their titles. 
They are called Dan^ha, SarvatobJiadra, Nandydvarta, Padmaka, Svastika, 
Prastara, Kdrmuka, and GhaturmukJia, the plan being based on the layout 
or general shape of the settlement.^ The town {nagara), which is stated to 
be especially associated with the king or his representative ruler, that is, which 
servos as the administrative headquarter or the seat of government,® varies 
in accordance with its importance and size and the rank of the ruler residing 
therein. Thus with regard to town-planning the bases of classification are 
manifold. As busmess centre towns are called BdjadJidnl, Nagara, Pura, 
Nagarl, Kheta, Kharvata, Kubjaka, and Pattana* The town imit intended to 
serve as defensive fortress is divided into another eight groups known as 
&ibira, Vdliinlmukha, Stlidnlya, Dromka, SamvidJia or Vardhaka, Kolaka, 
Nigama, and Skandhdvdrafi As military bases the town unit is distinguished 
as Oiridurga (hiU fort), Vanadurga (forest fort), Jaladurga (water fort), Batha- 
durga (chariot fort), Devadurga (invincible divine fort), Pankadurga (marshy 
fort) and Miiradnrga (mixed fort). 


0 This paper is adapted from the dissertation submitted by Mr. V. F. K. Nair to the 
University of Madras for the Diploma in Geography Examination. All the maps have been 
drawn by him. 

I 1 As published by the Oxford University Press, 1934, Vol. IH (Text), Vol. IV (Trondation), 
Vol. V (Dlustrativo Plates). 

s Manasara, Chap. IX, 1-4, compare Evamohashtavidhamgramaifatat-tad-rupena Sonjnitam. 

s BhupatinSm chapi sarveshiim astragrahyndi-kromSt vakshjn sazhk^pya nagarasya 
tu 1ftVHhTnn.nnm (ManasoTO, X, 1-2). The royal order is divided into nine classes comprising 
Chakravortin, maharaja or adhiraja, narendra or mahendra, porshnika, pa^tadbara, ma^daleSa, 
pat^bhaj, prahoraka, and astragrahin (M. XL, 2—5). 

* Manasara, X, 37-40. . 

8 Ibid., X, 40-42. 



276 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


According to this standard text thoro is not much dilForonco between a 
village, a town, and a fort. All are fortified j)laces intended for tho residence 
of people of various callings and temperament. A town is tho extension of a 
village. A fort is but a town principally meant to .servo as a military camj 
for the defence. Thus there is no fundamental dilForonco of the rural and th(? 
urban population of tho modem time. Tho amenities of life have been almost 
impartially distributed as is clear from tho details supplied in the text and 
illustrated in tho Plates.^ 

The DaVi,daka (lit. stick, staff) derives its title from its straight rectangular 
plan. Lilce most of the plans it is surrounded by tho ditch and rampart. 
Within, it is divided into eight main bloeks by throe roads running from north 
to south, one street from east to west biscets the whole area. Thoro is another 
broad road running along tho surrormding rampart. Roads are fumisbed 
with foot-path on one side. Thoro aro temples of 6iva and Vislinu for public 
worship. Tho block assigned to the Brahmans oro further divided into 
five quarters by smaller streets or lanes. People of other oastes are housed 
in other blocks. 

The square plan called Sarvatobhadra has openings or outer gates (phadra) 
on aU {sarvatas) four direotions. Tho whole area inside tho surrounding 
ditch and rampart is divided by two main roads orossing in the centre into 
four main blocks which are further divided into numerous smaller quarters 
of various sizes by straight roads and lanes. At the central crossing there 
is a BralunS, temple or a public hall which is surrounded by similar structmes 
erected at the comer of the four main blocks. Common tanks are dug in 
all inhabited quarters. Caste-wise allotments aro followed here also. 

The Nandydvarta is an enlarged (lit. repeated, avarta) rectangular plan 
of pleasant {nandya) look and convenient residence of a largo population. 
The area inside the ditch and rampart is divided by twelve main roads into 
twenty-five main blocks some of which are ftirther subdivided into smaller 
quarters. Apart from caste-wise allotment people of various callings, viz. 
tailors, fishermen, blacksmiths, basket-makers, washermen, police, priests, 
royal dancers, physicians, clerks, etc. are housed in their own quarters. Public 
temples, tanks, gardens, etc. are placed in all convenient quarters. 

The PadmaJea plan derives its title from its lotus (padma)-shaped layout 
which is shewn not only by its ditch and rampart but also by the shape of the 
four main blocks flanked by the two main roads crossing at the centre where 
a public hall is allotted. The main blocks are further subdivided into some 
thirty-two quarters where people of different callings and stmetures for various 
uses are allotted. 

^ The Svastika (lit. auspicious, cross-like) plan shows a pleasant layout 
by the two main roads crossing at the centre and by the four Tnn.iT> wings. 
It is at once pleasing and convenient although looks complicated as in a 


1 AiohitootTjre of M&nasara, Vol. V, Kates XV-XXV. 


VILIjAGBS and TCWNS in ancient INDIA 


277 


modem congested town. As in the three previous so also here allotment 
has been made for the royal residence and quarters for the king’s ministers 
and his offices in addition to the general population of various castes and pro- 
fessions and faith. Hero each of the four wings has its own roads and lanes, 
^ts common halls, parks and tanl^s. A^ahilapattana, the old capital of 
Guzerat, was built according to this plan.i 

The Prastara (lit. expanded) plan is like the Nandyavarta, a rectangular 
one divided by sixteen broad roads into some thirty-six blocks. It also contains 
the royal palace in addition to the usual quarters for the inhabitants of various 
categories. 

The Kdrmuka (bow-shaped) plan justifies its title by its half-circle out- 
line which is divided into four triangular blocks by three arrow-like broad 
roads which are crossed by tliree other semicircular roads and one straight 
road running east to west as the diameter of the half-circle. It looks nbarming 
and admirably suits a river- or seaside situation. In conformity with its 
situation it is a commercial place and its population are mostly business men 
and it has allotted prominent places for markets and godowns, and police. 
Public temples are placed at the central quarters easily accessible from all the 
twenty-eiglit quarters. 

The Chakmnuhha (lit. having four faces) is a very beautiful rectangular 
plan. The four roads running sidewise from the middle of a side of the main 
rectangle and terminating at the middle of its right and left sides form another 
parallelogram, The main four roads from the middle of the sides of the 
main rectangle meet at the side of the central plot which is allotted for the 
residence of the Brahmans, the priests and the main temple. There are 
twelve other main roads, which together with the other eight roads have formed 
some forty-eight quarters that have been allotted for the usual purposes 
including the royal residence. 

Of the town units Bajadhdni (lit. the city with the king’s palace in it) 
would be a suitable designation for several of the village schemes wherein a 
royal residence has been included. This common epithet applicable to all 
the towns and several of the villages is, however, distinguished in accordance 
with the ranlc of the royalty, which is divided into nine categories, whose 
residence is the most distinguishing feature of the settlement. In outline 
the special plan elaborated imder the title JRajadJidnl corresponds in many 
respects to the village scheme called GJiaturmukha. Thus the four main roads 
running from the middle of the four sides of the rectangular plan terminate, 
not by crossing each other as is the case in some other plans, but at the middle 
of the four sides of the central rectangle in the centre of which is built the 
main temple surrounded by public parks. Another rectangle surrounding 
the central one contains at the four comers, covering the central rectangle, 
the royal palace in the North-west, quarters for royal priests and State officials 


1 Hemoohandra in bis Sonskrita DvyaSraya (1. 4fi.} describes it in detail. 


278 


B. 0. LA.W VOIiXJMK 


in the South-west, Brahmans in the South-east and the public halls in the North- 
east. The immediately outer quarters of this largo rectangle are allotted to 
people of royal blood and Kshatriyas, ministers, nobles, Vai^yas (traders), 
markets and physicians. Beyond these aro the quarters for guest-houses 
{sattra), schools, colleges, police, weavers, tailors, servants (4udras), washef: 
men, milkmen, oilmen, Aveapon-makors, recreation grounds, public tanks. 
Behind working classes, arc placed at the rear side fishermen, hunters, black- 
smiths and others. Barracks for soldiers and guards are allotted to the 
boundary linos against tho surrounding rampart beyond wliich is the usual 
ditch. There are more than twenty-four main roads and some sixty quarters 
referred to in tho Rajadhdnl plan. 

The next three town-units knoAvn ns tiagara, nagari, and pura are basically 
the same. The title ‘nagara ’ is associated with towns Avith masculine epithets, 
such as, Rama-nagara, and ‘nagari ’ with those bearing feminine designation, 
such as Ka^i-nagari. These imits may or may not bo tho administrative head- 
quarters together Avith tho royal court. Similarly Pura implying ‘residence’, 
such as Lava-pura (modem Lahore), may be a commercial and residential city 
without a special significance. 

The Kheta is a special plan with a distinct geography and features. As 
the title Rani-kheta of tho Almora district shoAA's such toAAms are hill-stations 
built at the tope, valley or bottom of a hiU. Although it may be built in any 
shape according to available space, tho one illustrated in the text looks almost 
lilce the Kdrmuka plan built facing a river or sea, with this difference that the 
half circumference of a circle is divided into fivo sides of a half decagon. But 
the arrow-shaped tliree main roads and three covering roads divide the whole 
area in the same way into some fifteen blocks wherein the quarters of the 
usual population are allotted. 

The epithet of the next plan, KJiarva^ (lit. dw^arfed) is no longer in the 
original form available but the titles lilm Khurja in United Pro\rinces, 
Khajuraho and others appear to be its derivatives. Tho plan illustrated is a 
circular one originating from a central temple, as London has grown surround- 
ing the St. Paul’s Cathedral. It has eight diagonal roads terminating at the 
circumference of the central circle and four main circular roads. There are thus 
twenty-two blocks in addition to the central circle where the public temple 
and surrormding open parks are built. When it is built in a forest there need 
be no provision for the ditch, the rampart alone serving the purpose of defence. 

The Kuhjaha plan is bodily illustrated by the remains of the old city of 
Kanya-Kubja, the modem Kanouj in the United Provinces. It is an ordinary 
rectangular plan, with the hump originating from a central half-circle in the 
shape of the Klie^ plan. It is a royal city with the king’s palace, courts, 
and afi other appurtenances (appendices). As illustrated, there are some 
sixteen main roads and some thirty-two main blocks allotted to various usual 
pmposes. 

Ofthemilitary camps knoAvn as i§i6ira, Vahimmukha,Dro^ka, VardhaJea, 
Kolaka, Nigcma and Skandhdvara, one water-fort, a Dro^aka fortress, and a 


VUiLAGES AND TOWNS IN ANCIENT INDIA 279 

Sibira encampment together with the details of fort gates are illustrated in 
the accompanying plates. The water-fort is an island triangular in shape and 
is connected with ono or more harbours, containing some twenty-four blocks 
surrounding a central circular one. Much attention is devoted to a scientific 
-Reposition of soldiers and guards. 

The Drovfdtca fortress is a quadrangle with two unequal sides. It is 
connected with harbours and sewers as purely military camps but contains a 
civil population and also the king’s palace. 

Sibira is a rectangular military camp. It also contains the king’s tent 
at the centre. It is divided into four rectangles, one containing the 
other. Special attention is devoted for the protection of the king who appears 
to have been the commander-in-chief of the army. Allotment of quarters 
for soldiers and barracks signifies its military feature. 

The brief outline as given above and the plates of the villages and towns 
as enclosed will permit the inference of a common feature for aU these settle- 
ments. ‘Each village or town is surroimded by a wall made of brick or stone. 
This rampart in case of a fortified town is at least twelve cubits (eighteen feet) 
in height and its thiclmess at the base is at least six cubits (nine feet). Beyond 
this wall there is generally a ditch broad and deep enough to cause serious 
obstruction in the event of an attack on the village or the town. There are 
generally four main gates at the middle of the four sides and as many at the 
four comers. Inside the wall there is a large street ranrdng all round the 
settlement. There are generally two other large streets, each of which connects 
two opposite main gates. They intersect each other at the centre of the town 
or the village where a public temple or assembly hall is generally built. The 
whole area is thus divided into four main blocks, each of which is again sub- 
divided into many blocks by streets and lanes which are always straight. 
The two main streets crossing at the centre have houses and foot-paths on one 
side of the street. The ground-floor of these houses on the main streets 
consists of shops. The street which runs round the village or the town has 
also houses and foot-paths only on one side. These houses are mainly pubfio 
buildings, such as schools, libraries, guest-houses, etc. AU other streets 
generally have residential buildings on both sides. The houses liigh or low 
are generally uniform in make. Drains follow the slope of the ground. Tanks 
and ponds are dug in aU inhabited parts, and located where they can con- 
veniently be reached by a large number of inhabitants. The temples for public 
worship, as well as the public commons, gardens and parks are similarly 
allotted. People of the same caste or profession are generally housed in the 
same quarter. The dimensions of the smallest units are about 100 by 200 
davdas and the largest town unit 7,200 by 14,400 dandas. 

The details of the art of building villages, towns and houses were system- 
atically embodied for the first time in the avowedly architectural treatises, 
although the building operation must have been in existence long, long before 
these treatises were composed. The standard text, Mdnasdra, whereficom 
some details have been quoted above is strikingly RimilnT to the treatise known 



280 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


as the architecture of the Eoman architect Vitruvius of approximately 26 B.G. 
The editio princeps of Vitruvius’s treatise was first printed at Bomo in or 
about 1486 A.D. The unique position of tins treatise is clear from the fact 
that since its first appearance in the fifteenth century there have been till 
1807 forty-two editions of the work, sovontecn editions being in Latin, cloven, 
in Italian, two in Spanish, six in Breneh, four in Gorman and two in English. 
Thus the European arclutocturo wliich developed in various countries since 
the fifteenth century was largely infiuonced by this treatise. In its present 
complete form the Manamra was first published in 1934, although in 1834 it 
was quoted by Bam Baz in his Essay on Indian Archiiceture. In Appendix I 
of the writer’s Dictionary of Hindu Arcliiicciurc some two hundred archi- 
tectural texts have been referred to, most of which appear to have been 
indebted to the standard text Mdnasdrai}- And in Chapters II and III of the 
writer’s Indian Ardhitectnre^ direct quotations from this text by several 
popular architectural treatises and direct influence upon general Sanskrit 
literature dealing with architectural matters have been elaborated. Thus 
although it had not so many regular editions as Vitruvius is honoured with 
the influence of Manasdra in shaping the Indian architecture, since at least 
the first century of the Christian era, cannot bo denied.^ But, on the other 
hand, as we will show later on, the prescriptions of Manasdra reflect the condi- 
tion ofvillage scheme obtained during the period of Mohenjodaro (B.C. 3250- 
2760), of the Vedas (B.C. 2600-1000), of the Epics (B.C. 1000-500 A.D.) 
including the Buddhist (B.C. 600-300 A.D.) and the Purapas (300-1200 A.D.). 

The present Mohenjodaro area is ‘a long narrow strip of land between 
the main river (Indus) bed and the Western Nara loof. There are stated 
to have been several cities, one being superimposed upon the other. The 
remains of the uppermost city were hid by the mounds. The actual area 
covered by the mounds is now no more than about 240 acres. Originally, the 
site of Mohenjodaro must have been much more extensive than it is today 
and have formed a more closely connected whole’. 

In the extant layout ‘there is a main road, designated by the excavator 
as East street, which runs across the site from east to west. There is another 
long street, but less important as the thoroughfare of the city, which crosses 
East street at right angles and thus runs from north to south and is designated 
as First street. From these two long streets as well as from the short sections 
of others disclosed in other parts of the site, it is evident that the city was 
intersected by long streets or approximately straight thorouglifares mainly 
oriented north to south or east to west. The main thoroughfares are all 
below the level of the buildings erected alongside of them’. The extent of 
ground covered by this city at successive periods is not definitely known, 
but it is clear that once it must have extended well beyond the nvisting limits. 
Sir John Marshall asserts that ‘the city must have been surrounded by walls’. 

1 Diotionary of Hmdu Architectvire, pp, 749-804. ■ 

s Bp. 89-109, 110-133 (Bosltion of the Hanasara in. Literature). 

s Ibid., Chap. V, pp. 160-198. 


VILLAGES AND TOWES IN ANCIENT INDIA 


281 


The layout of the whole city of any of these periods or strata is thus 
missing from the account of Sir John Marshall and others. A picture may, 
however, he reconstructed by joining up the various sections or areas as 
described by them. The city would thus look of irregular shape, like the 
Dronaka fortress of the Manasdra’s plans, the longer side in some cases being 
from north to south, and in others from east to west. The streets and lanes, 
however, are nearly straight. By the intersections of these the city is divided 
into different blocks. The central part appears to have been occupied by some 
public building or the great Bath. Each block contained a number of buildings 
for the residence of the people of the same profession as the quarters of the 
washermen indicate. There appears to have been an extensive arrangement 
for drainage — a peculiarity which is strongly emphasized in the Mdnamra 
and other l^ilpa-ddstras. The general city plan, including even the irregularity 
of sides, will also correspond to some of the plans elaborately described in the 
Architecture of Mdnasdra?- 

No such remains of the Vedic villages and towns have been yet discovered. 
But from the references Idee Pura-blut (destroyer of cities) the existence of 
some Idnd of town is clear. Besides, mention is made of ‘a sovereign who, 
exercising no oppression, sits down in this substantial and elegant hall budt 
with a thousand piUars’ and of residential houses with such piUars as are said 
to be vast, comprehensive and thousand-doored.® Mitra and Varmgia are 
represented as occupying a great palace ^vith a thousand pillars and a thousand 
gates.® References to such extensive structures will also indicate the exis- 
tence of big cities. 

*Thq view of Zimmer and others after him (Vedic Index of Macdonell 
and Keith, I, 638-640), that Vedic India knows of nothing more sohd and 
complex than the hamlet, like the early Gfermans and Slavs who had no castle- 
structures and town-life, is an extreme one; for it is now realized as a basic 
fact that the Vedic Indians, like Iranians, Hellenes, and Italians, were super- 
imposed upon an earlier civilization Thus it becomes quite 

reasonable to find in prithvl, urvi, databhuji, aimaniayl and dyasipurs the massive, 
extensive, hundred-walled, stone-built and iron-protected forts. It is rm- 
necessary to assume forced explanations to discover in them mysteries of 
myths and fancies of metaphors.’ The archaeological remains discovered at 
Mohenjodaro and other places should corroborate this view. 

In the great Epics, the Bdmdyana and the Mahdbhdrata, the layout 
of big cities has been fully described. 

‘ The great city of Ayodhya built on the banks of the Sara3m. was twelve 
Yojanas (96 miles) in length and nine Yojanas (72 miles) in breadth, the 

houses of which stood in triple and long extended rows the streets 

and lanes were scientifically disposed, and the principal streets well-watered- 
It was £Bed with merchants of various descriptions, and adorned with 

1 Architecture of Manns^a, Vol. IV, Chaps. IX, X, pp. 63-98. 

2 Wilson’s Rigveda, H, 313, 179; compare R.V., H, 41, 6; V, 62, 6; VH, 88, 6. 

2 A.V. 12; ix, 3. 



282 


B. C. LA,\V VOLUME 


abundance of jewels; difficult of access, filled with spacious houses, beautiful 
with gardens, and groves of mango trees, surrounded by a deep and impassable 
moat, and completely furnished with arms. It was ornamented with stately 
gates and porticos, and constantly guarded by archers. . . . Ayodhya thus 
fortified by gates and firmly barred, was adorned wdth areas disposed in regular' 
order, and abounding with a variety of warlike weapons and with artifices 
of every kind, charioteers, cannons {dataghni, capable of killing a hundred at 
a time), crowded with elephants and horses. It was beautified wdth temples, 
gardens, bathing tanlss and spacious buildings full of inhabitants. It was 
embellished "with magnificent palaces, the domes of which resembled the tops 
of mountains. The houses therein formed one continued row, of equal height, 
resounding with the delightful, music of tabor, the flute and the harp.’ ^ Such 
copious description of numerous other cities is available in this earlier Epic. 

The later Epic, Mahabharata, also supplies descriptions of some hundreds 
of cities. Mr. Hopkins 2 who has made a special study of the Epics and the 
Puranas specially in respect of the town-plan has made a masterly siimmary 
which may’ be quoted "with a great advantage. ‘We may examine the general 

plan of a Hindu city It had high, perhaps concentric, walls 

about it, in which were watch-towers. Massive gates, strong doors ® protected 
cliiefly by a wide bridge moat, the latter filled with crocodiles and armed with 
palings, guarded the walls. The store-house was built near the rampart. 
The city was laid out in several squares.^ The streets were lighted with 
torches.6 The traders and king’s court made this town their residence. The 
farmers lived in the country, each district guarded if not by a tower modelled 
on the great city, at least by a fort of some kind. Out of such fort ,grew the 
town. Bound the town as round the village was the common land to some 
distance, later converted into public gardens, as we see in the Mxidro' 
raksJiasa. The city gates ranged in number from four to eleven and were 
guarded by squads of men and single wardens.® Door-keepers guarded the 
courts of the palace as well as the city gates. 

‘ In the city special palaces existed for the king, the princes, the chief 
priests, ministers, and military officers. Besides these and humble dwellings, 
the larger houses being divided into various courts (as the Vasantasena’s 
mansion referred to in the Mriclichha-JcatiJca having seven courts each with a 
gate house), there were various assembly halls, dancing halls, liquor-saloons, 
gambling halls, courts of justice, and the booths of small traders with gold- 
smith’s shops and the work places of other artisans. The arsenal appears to 
have been not far from the king’s apartments. Pleasure-parks abounded. 


1 Bamaya^a, I. 6. 6-17. 
a J.A.O.S., No. 13, pp. 176, 176. 

a Mahabharata, XV. 16. 3; the king left Hastinapur by a high gate. 

* The Mbh. teoommends six squares but Bamayana (11. 48. 19) mentions fow only. 

^ Mbh., I. 221. 36; Bamayapa, VI. 112. 12. 

® Eleven gates (Keith, Up., V. 1); Nine (VBraha,p. 62, 6), Bamayana (VI. 93. 7); Four 
(Act VI, Mrichchha-ka^ika). 


VILLAGES AED TOWNS IN ANCIENT INDIA 


283 


The royal palace appears always to have had its dancing hall attached.’ The 
above descriptions from the Sjpics which were the source of the classical liter- 
ature tally vuth those quoted from the architectural standard text of Mdnasara 
which also corroborate the picture of villages and towns of the Buddliist 
rporiod di’awn by Bhys Davids from the canonical works and the Jdtakas.^ 

‘In the Buddha’s time and in that portion of northern India where the 
Buddhist influence was most early felt . . . the arrangements of villages,’ 
says Bhys Davids, ‘were practically similar. We nowhere hear of isolated 
houses. The houses were all together, in a group, separated only by narrow 
lanes. Immediately adjoining was the sacred grove of trees of the primeval 

forest Beyond this was the wide expanse of cultivated field, usually 

rice field. Villages are described as muting of their own accord to build 
mote-hills, and rest-houses, and reservoirs, to mend the roads between their 
own and adjacent villages and to lay out parks.’ 2 

Begarding town-plans ‘■we are told of lofty walls, ramparts ■with but- 
tresses and watch-towers; the whole surrounded by a moat or even a double 
moat, one of water and one of mud. But we are nowhere told of the length 
of the fortifications or of the extent of the space they enclosed. It would 
seem that we have to thinlc not so much of a large walled city as of a fort 

surrouiijded by a number of suburbs From the frequent mention 

of the imdows of the great houses opening directly on to the streets or squares 
it would appear that it was not the custom to have them surrounded by any 
private grounds ; there were, however, no doubt, enclosed spaces behind the 
front of the houses, which latter abutted on the streets.’ 2 

The extant and the exact measurement of some plans are, however, 
available. The fortress, Girivraja, four and a half miles in circumference, is 
said to have been built by Maha-Govinda, the architect. Bimbisara is stated 
to have built the capital city of Bajagriha which was three miles in circum- 
ference. ‘The stone walls of Girivraja are the oldest extant buildings in 
India.’ Mention is also made of the cities of Ayodhya, Baranasi, Kampilla, 
KosambI, Madhura, MithilS', Sagala, Dakota, ^ravasti, Ujjayim, Vesali and 
others.* 

These traditions of the highly conservative Indo-Aryan commumty 
continues today despite several cultural onslaughts since the fifth century 
before Christ. The class-'wise distribution of quarters in our present ■villages 
and to^wns still continues ; the surrounding ditches have disappeared but their 
mark is represented in many old settlements by the dry drains, and the remains 
of old ramparts can still be seen in many instances. 

Certain details specifically mentioned in the Epic and Buddhist accounts 
deserve special notice. It is stated that ‘houses were never built in isolation’. 
This indicates the fundamental nature of Aryan culture; the Aryans unlike 

1 See for details the writer’s Indian Architecture, H, pp. 9-16. 

- Buddhist India, pp. 42, 45, 49; compore Jataka, I, 199. 
s Buddhist Lidia, pp. 64-65. 

4 Vimonavatthu, Commentary, p. 82; see writer’s Hindu Architecture, p. 9, note 2. 


28 i 


B. 0, LAW VOLITME 


the non- Aryans were characteristically social heings; they could never and 
nowhere live singly and alone. It is only the primitives who were grossly 
selfish and abnormally cruel and callous. Thus a primitive man would not 
care even for his own children; in this respect he is lower than an animal which 
has an instinctive sympathy for its helpless offsprings. It is, therefore, that 
while the animals move in herds by instinctive impulse for society, the 
primitives shun the society deliberately. The Indo-Aryans, on the other 
hand, were social beings by nature and moved in a company not like the 
animals in herd but in an organized form when they left their original home 
in search of better climate and soil. This fact should explain why the houses 
for Aryan residence were never built in isolation. 

It is therefore but natural that ‘villagers united of their own accord’ 
to build mote-hills for their safety and security, rest-houses for guests, reser- 
voirs for common use and benefit, and to mend public roads and lay out 
common parks for the comfort and convenience of the whole society. 

Similarly, the ‘watering of the roads’ and ‘ providing street-lights’ would 
indicate clearly a state of civic sense which is lacking even today in many 
settlements. Both in village schemes and town-plans the drainage system 
and the orientation of residences to get the maximum benefit of the sim and 
the wind have been emphasized: the hygienic value of these matters in con- 
nection with villages and towns can hardly be overestimated. In such thickly 
populated areas the benefit of straight roads for firee ventilation- of air and 
sun is obvious. The device of having foot-paths and shops on one side of 
thickly populated roads and keeping the other side open and free of conges- 
tion is a highly scientific one, and may be imitated wherever feasible with 
great benefit even at modem cities. The houses of uniform height in the 
same locality provide equal facilities and advantages for the whole population 
in addition to satisfying the aesthetic need of a civilized community. The 
most natural and mutually convenient practice of housing people of the same 
profession and equal economic level in the same quarter or block is not only 
homogeneous but also preventive of inevitable clash and disharmony. 

Mr. Havel who studied Indian civilization in close quarter for a lifetime 
asserts that ‘the most advanced science of Europe has not yet improved upon 
the principles of the plaiming of the garden cities of India based upon the 
Indian village-plan as a unit’ .... ‘It will probably be a revelation to 
modem architects to know how scientifically the problems ‘of town-planning 
are treated in these ancient Indian architectural treatises. Beneath a great 
deal of mysticism, which may be scoffed at as pure superstition, there is a 
foundation of sound common sense and scientific knowledge which should 
appeal to the mind of the European expert.’ i 


1 E. B. Havel; Indian Ci-vilization, pp. 7-8. 


A FEW THOUGHTS ON HINDI LITERATURE 

By 

Pbop. LaiiIta Prasad Suktjl- 
I 

Hindi litoraturo came into existence as early as about the eighth century 
A.D. and it goes "without saying that Hindi language as such must have come 
into existence much earlier. On the basis of some couplets of the Siddhas 
discovered in Nepal and on some other cogent evidence K. P. Jayaswal has 
fixed the date of Hindi, developed as an independent language, as the sixth 
century A.D.^ After a thorough scientific analysis no"w the linguists are 
almost unanimous that in the said couplets it "was the early form of Hindi 
evolved firom the Apabhrani^a stage. 

If we look at this vast literature of twelve hundred years, produced in 
the vast area of Hindi-speaking people, which extends firom the borders of 
Western Bengal to the eastern fringe of the Punjab and firom the Tarai of 
the Himalayas up to the upper boundaries of the Vindhyas (covering the 
modern pro"vinoes of Bihar, United Pro-vinces of Agra and Oudh, North- 
western Province, Rajputana, Malwa, Central Provinces, Central India Agency 
and greater part of Eastern India Agency States and parts of Chota Nagpur), 
it will not be difficult to see that the intellectual contribution of the people 
inhabiting them has been quite in keeping with the standard of the rich 
^ heritage of its past. 

The true estimate of a literature is made primarily on the basis of its 
quality; and of course the quantity and variety also do count. The literature 
of each country has its o"vm plan of development according to the cultural 
and social background in which it has to grow and thrive ; and yet there are 
certain universal laws that control generally the intellectual working of man 
as much as his physical or the spiritual. This is the basis on which the genuine 
greatness of a literature is tested. 

In spite of the racial and national differences, wliich have separated 
one group of man from the other, there are certain common aspects which 
entitle men to be called human beings; and such elements find their expression 
in the fundamental emotions of love and fear, anger and hatred, pathos and 
laughter. Primitive or cmlized human life has been nothing but a chain of 
experiences of the above emotions tlirough its various activities; and literature 
is a record of the same. 

n 

Now, if we carefully go through the whole of Hindi literature, we find it 
fulfilling all the demands of a great literature. In antiquity it has a unique 
position of its o"vm as compared "with the literatures of any other modem 
Indian language ; and in "vustness, variety, and bulk it is incomparable. Hindi 


1 See bis address as President of the First Bihar Hindi Sahitya Sammilanee. 




286 


B. 0. liAW VOLUME 


being the mother tongue of a large number of people had, of course, many 
advantages over other sister languages. We know how important a role 
tradition plays in preparing the congenial atmosphere for the intellectual 
working of man without which no great achievement in this direction is 
possible. And Hindi, being the language of an area i of the greatest and T 
perhaps the most glorious of literary, cultural, and social traditions, had the 
ground already prepared to receive the marvellous intellectual contribution of 
its genius, endowed with the sacred mmsion of unfading brilliance and appeal. 
One of the most remarkable factors in the creation and growth of Hindi litera- 
ture is that almost from the very inception it has had the advantage of being 
created by those who were inspired thinkers, and who came with some divine 
mission to deliver to the suffering humanity. They did create immortal 
pieces of art planned on the moat scientific basis, but none of them was an 
effort towards ‘art for art’s sake’; rather upon them art had dawned itself 
to reveal the divine message of redemption and to flood the world with the 
light of knowledge, and dispel darkness. They offered solutions to the eternal 
questions of humanity, which are to be solved over and over again and yet 
they remain unsolved. 

m 

Surdas, one of the greatest singers ever born — sitting at the ‘SJiree Nath’ 
temple as its chief singer — composed thousands of ‘Padas’ devoted to the 
worship of his deity — ‘Bala Krishna’. In his Sursagar he has narrated the 
story of Bhxxgavat Purama in general. But the tenth skandha, which is the 
biggest and the best, is devoted entirely to describing the most captivating 
pranks of the child Krishna and the other important portion of the same, 
generally known as the ’Bhramar Oeeia’, describes the Viralia of the Oopls 
separated from Sri Krishna after he had gone to Mathura. The first portion 
gives the most vivid description of a child, specially of his physical and mental 
tendencies and activities. The fondness of the parents for the child and the 
ever vigilant care and anxiety of the loving mother with which she tends the 
child are the topics very ably dealt with by this bom-blind great singer. The 
note of unfailing appeal underlying the innocence of a child and the touches 
of the filial fondness which are eternally engrained in human heart, have 
imparted a perpetual grace to the poetry of this great singer. 

Mother Yashoda persuades the unwilling child (Krishpa) to drink a little 
more milk: 

(1) ^ i 

X X X X X 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ fert \ 

% cIT^ ^ ^ Q 

1 * Tliis area has been the heart of the moat ancient Hindu culture; and even after the advent 
of the Mohammedans it -was only here that the Mamie culture thrived, and ultimately got inter- 
•fused with the ancient Hindu culture.’ — Hopiina. 


287 


A FKW THOTOHTS ON HINDI LITEBAa?TTBE 

ISfSr ^ 'ft 5Rft ^ I 

fsPife ^ ’f^ ^i<l ^ ^ II 

(2) ^ I 

m ^ ^cT ^ II 

^ ^ 5Hjf f % I 

^ITfcI s^qlReT SflfTpr ^ ^ || 

^ pMeiNci tif^ trt^ ^ 3f arnssf 3ct^ I 

’?ft ’f WN?: ^ n 

Tho innocent oflforts of the baby to tease liis mother Yashoda have been 
well portrayed: 

^ Trtf !T ^ ^ 1 

fbcrr ^ ’^^TERT ^T n 

*?f5 ^Rft«rr ^ ^ •TRT =i\*^41l I 

^5- f®iGi ^ 'RT^jft *Ric5 H etc. etc. 

That ever-present imitative faculty inborn in an intelligent child with 
its fun and joy has found its due expression in the vision of the poet; and 
with liis suiierb artistic scenes he has chosen the occasion of ‘taldng the meal* 
to reveal it in verses : 

^rnr ^ i 

13T<T ^ ^ r-lWci •i«t^r*l’MT II 

X X X X X 

^3TeI %cr BEfU% ^ ^ TTRcI ^ t[^rqT I 
X X X X X 

' ^ElTSSf ?3Tcr siTWcI ^ ^ I 

That the indignation of a sensitive child at the teasing remarks of a senior 
brother or elderly companion has ever been the occasion of an innocent 
fun of human life. Even this does not escape the poet's notice, and he paints 
the scene to remind us of the eternal homeliness of life through ages gone by : 

( 1 ) 

»rNt ^TfeT art^r ^ crtfw ^ n 

^ 1 

X X X X X X 

515^ 3ft€t 3?r ^ ww 1 
^25^ ^ II 



288 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


^ ^ 1 
^rJ’f’T ^ fer ’EmcT snprfjT ^ irf^r 6:^ ii e<ic. 

(2) ^ sTTcT I 

^ftsR*r ^ cRf^ f?§^ w ^■*iT n 

sR'fsr ^ ^ ^ 1 

5R^ ^ ^ ^ STeTsr ^?TT H 

^ ^T sjTfar 5R[ ^ ^ I 

^ ^ ^ Tftf^ fiSHRy II etc. 

Out of innumerable beautiful' Pa^os* of equally high merit it was difficult 
to choose, yet there is hardly any interesting aspect of child-psychology that 
has not been touched by this great singer Surdas. 

Now the question arises whether it was for the mere fancy of the subject 
that the poet chose it or for some higher purpose ? Surdas, being a disciple 
of VaUabhacharya, belongs to the cult of Ejrishpa worshippers in which 
Balkrishna has been accepted as the form of Krishna to be worshipped. One 
of the reasons is that the path of Bhakti primarily aims at purification of the 
heart of the devotee by bringing softer human passions to the utter 
exclusiveness, and thereby it helps him to obtain the supreme path. 

The devotion to Balkrishna was chosen for the reason that the innate 
innocence and purity of a child has an unconscious appeal to the softer and 
nobler emotions of the people. But even to effect this natural reaction, it 
is necessary that the artist should maintain in his creation the high standard 
of conformity with the liighest Natural Order. The very fact, that for the 
last so many centuries the *Padas’ sung by the great singer have been 
vigorously sustaining the fire of devotion in innumerable beings, is enough to 
speak for the magnificent success of the artist. 

Udhava, a chum of Sri Krishpa, was the professed champion of Yogamarga, 
and he was sent out by Sri Elrishna to Vrindavana to console the Gopis who were 
suffering from the severe pangs of separation from their beloved Sri Krishna. 
He had enthusiastically accepted the onerous duty of bringing peace to the 
suffering Gopis by initiating them in the cult of Yoga, which he firmly held 
to be superior to the Bhakti cult. 

But when he was asked by the Gopis that Bhakti was not a mere cult or 
religion but a sacred creed and faith of life, his scholastic arguments of rare 
logical value utterly failed. He was unsuccessfiil in his mission and he himself } 
got converted to their cult of love and devotion of Bhakti. 

Of course Surdas claims no originafity. In retelling what is given in the 
Bhagavat Purana he won for himself a much superior position as a successful 
poet and artist as compared to the great author of the Bhagavat. The poignant 
simplicity of the Gopis has reached its zenith in the songs of the poet who 
has breathed in them that immortal life knows no fading nor decay. 


A I-JSW THOUGHTS OH HINDI LITERATUBE 


289 


In ]iis time, sincerity of hecirt, coupled with that unflincliing love and 
devotion, once agam expresses itself in its truest colour and wins a very easy 
victory over the more casuistry of scholarship and pretensions of logic. This 
is the conclusive hit that once again kindles the spark of true light and reassures 
"Iflie devotee of the truth that the divine quest is purely a matter of realization 
and not of learned arguments or sense perception. 

Apart irom the superb philosophic value of this chapter, it has a merit 
of its own as a pure piece of art and poetry. If true art aims at the inter- 
pretation of the genial current of human emotions, and if the Basa is held 
to be the soul of poetry then perhaps a brighter 

specimen of art or poetry than this is yet to be created. The dominating 
Basa in is the ‘Adirasa’. But the display of all the elements of this 
Basa with such a perfect portrayal in its absolute universal aspect is a rare 
achievement, not only in Hindi literature alone but also in the world literature. 

IV 

Tulsidasa was another bright luminary of Hindi literature. Vincent Smith 
has paid the most glowing tribute to him when he says that ‘undoubtedly the 
greatest personality of the sixteenth century was Tulsi and not Akbar’. 

This great saint Tulsidasa, the author of Bam-Charitra-Manas and many 
more works of great merit and value, was also a Vaishnava Bhakta. But 
lie was a devotee of Bama the ‘ Maryadapurushottam’. Sur and Tulsi both 
belonged to the BhaUi cult, and yet there was an important difference of 
Jutlook between the two. Sur looked upop his deity Sri Eorishna as his 
iear friend whereas with Tulsi Bama was his master and the protector. This 
naterial difference of outlook was very vital. According to him poetry was 
nerely the necessary medium of self-expression. As one of the modem 
Joets has rightly said,^ ‘Poetry did not garnish Tulsi, rather through the pen 
>f this great divine singer poetry got itself garnished.’ He had also a mission 
>f his own. In all his voluminous works (except in three) his theme is Bama’s 
ife. But he has been exceptionally successftd in maintaining a scrupulously 
ligh standard of ideal morality in painting his character, and yet the graces 
>f the muse have not been allowed to be sacrificed or left unattended to even 
n a single place. There is hardly an occasion here to discuss his great works 
D detail. But generally speaking, it can be stated safely that Tulsi s outlook 
•n life was extremely broad and he was the greatest champion of Hindi 
lulture. Hjs creed of culture demanded the highest discipline of the three 
elves (i.e. the physical, the inteUectual and the spiritual) and the capacity of 
autual understanding and sincere tolerance served as the test of the culture 
cquired. AU this self-discipline and the quest for peace was not merely for 
he worldly gain. But according to him, they were all the requisite pre- 
•arations for a higher life, i.e. the realization of Gk>d. 

In delivering his message he was not unmindful of the practical difaculties 
f man, and it was to solve th ese that he held out in his Bama the most 

1 ^ ^ VT ^ ” ii 


19 



290 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


perfect model of all the social relationships that a man is required to fulfil. In 
Sita he painted the most perfect model of the womanhood and the ideals 
thereof. It is marvellous indeed to see this great artist laying the foundation 
of his character in the most exalted imperial background of a royal palace 
and with all the paraphernalia of overflowing bounty and richness strewipi 
all over with its unusual lavishness and yet the entire practical life of his 
great character is lived untainted with the slightest touches of aristocracy. 
Thus the artist has achieved his great aim of presenting the life-models, 
embodying the highest ideal of a pure and noble life. In order to send his 
message to the suffering humanity, he chose to sing his divine wisdom in the 
language of the masses, although he was a profound scholar of Sanskrit. 

He was a very great idealist and he gave expression to his idealism 
through his great hero Rama. By the dint of liis superior genius and per- 
sonality Tulsidasa did not allow even for once his art to be sacrificed for his 
extreme idealism, or the idealism to be sacrificed to maintain the graces 
of art. Mere theorizing was genuinely foreign to his temperament as he 
himseff says, “ xr; ^ sr: 11 ” ‘not few 

are efficient to advise others; but those who actually act up to their own 
advice are not many 

He says that Rama was a dutiful son of an illustrious father to whom 
fu lfi l m ent of his promise was sacred; but his affection for his son Rama was 
very great. There sat the step-queen-mother demanding nothing shorter than 
the pound of flesh in the unconditional banishment of Rama. Rama broke 
the sad news in the presence of his own mother Kaushalya and sought her 
permission. Being so unprepared to receive such a rude shock, she maintained 
the perfect dignity of the most affectionate mother, the seniormost queen, 
the devoted consort of the royal lord, possessed of the unexcelled nobUity 
of a co-wife, who was blessed with the highest culture and understanding. 
And all this is achieved in the two brief lines from the pen of this immortal 
' singer : 

fqg «nciT, ^ ^ i 

* With a perfect composure she tells Rama that if the order of banishment 
is given by your royal father alone, then you need not go ; because such 
is your mother’s order, who, of course, is a superior authority; but if 
you have received orders from your father and mother (Kaikeyi) both, then 
you must obey, and my dear son the forest will be better than hundreds of 
Ayodhya for you.’ 

The above is just one of the finest specimens of his skill as a great poet 
and artist. The short space hardly allows a more detailed treatment of the 
subject. 

V 

Now we turn to Blabir who was also one of the brightest jewels of Hindi 
literature. In respect of time he was senior to Sur or Tulsi. • In matter of 


A ITJEW THOUGHTS OH HIHDl LITJSRATUBE 


291 


faith and cult he belonged to the School of Ramananda, which prescribed 
the worship of Rama the incarnation of Vishniu. On the basis of the inTiar 
and outer evidence, it is undeniable that he belonged to the said school; but 
in essence, he had very little to do with the faith and practices of that school, 
i -^0 calls his God Rama in various names. But in conception, Rama of Kabir 
is not the traditional incarnation of Vishnu, He is the aU-pervading Nirgwm 
Brc^im and for his realization it is not Upasana or BliaUi that is needed; 
but what is required is pure and simple Sadhand. As the chief preceptor of 
this cult, Kabir was primarily a Sddhaka. 

Some refer to his Vaishnavite tendencies, and his leanings towards the 
path of BJiaJsii. It would be a mistake to class him as a Bhakia or a Vaishnava 
of any school. It is well known that Kabir never wrote a line in his own 
hands, nor did he follow any systematic plan of going about to preach his 
own doctrines. The numerous disciples who used to assemble round him 
from the various parts of the country and used to sing with him almost in a 
chorus spread his message all over the world. A part of preservation was 
also theirs. This being a Imown fact about the life and work of the poet, 
taking all the various coUeotions of Kabir, all that we can claim is to possess 
mainly his thoughts and also his spirit through some of his typical expressions. 

£!abir had no pretension of any scholastic background. His was the 
most direct method of acquiring and imparting knowledge, and he prescribed 
^nothing but the path of Sadlmnd as the surest method of self-realization; 

I 

^ ^ ^ 

’TTfV 

In referring to religious mythologies or in discussing the theological 
principles he has erred, and at times the errors are glaring; but when he 
discusses the merits or the requisite items of SddTiand he gives ample evidence 
of his complete mastery and thorough knowledge of his subject. ^ 

Kabir has also expressed his views on many other problems than self- 
realization ’. His utterances are usuaEy the outcome of his strong common- 
sense. A precise balance of outlook, brevity, and his appe^ to (reason 
rather than to emotions, are the outstanding characteristics of his utterances. 
Thus in spite of his critical attitude towards the commonest of human a gs 
he carried conviction to a very large number of people with the result that his 
utterances became the household words of wisdom and lig t amongs 
. .4The remarkable sincerity and inteUeotual purity of the sage are noticeable 


cT?r 

xnt ^ n 


in his valuable words. _ ^ 

A creative art is essentially superior to other types o . 6 

through the medium of art is the creation of the time spint that not only 
shapes its age, but also goes to sustain life against the forces rf de^y ^d 
ooiruption. Tins is the instdacatjon to hold that it is true that a Uterature 
is created by man who is also created by a great literature. 


SUFIS AND MUSIC 

By 

Db. M. L. Boy OuovimvRY Sastbt, M,A., Pji.D. 

Calcutta University 

It is not the place to define wluit Sufism is and what a Sufi stands for. 
Suffice it to say that Sufism is an attitude of mind towards God and things 
Godly. The Sufis have their omi way of tlvinldng, which the orthodox says, 
is not warranted by the law of the Prophet. Tlioy were often maligned, 
cursed and persecuted for their free thinlcing. Still they exist as a powerful 
factor in the community of the Muslims. 

Sufis generally hold independent opinions on many fundamental points 
of Islam. One of those is on the subject of music. Many of the Sufis hold 
that music is lawful. Of this class the most important are the ‘Chishtis’. 
The ‘Naqshbandi’ order holds that music is unlawful. Sattaria and Qadiriya 
hold that permissibility of audition of music is conditional. Other minor 
orders follow the practices of their preceptors — ‘Pits’. 

Sufis are classified into three distinctive groups according to time: — 

(а) Motaqaddemin — ^who were mentioned in the Tadhhiralul Awlia 

by Fariduddin Attar — such as Junayd Baghdadi, Abu Baler 
Shibli, Wais Qarani, Haram bin Hayan, Mansur Hallaj, Khawaja 
Hasan Basil, Dhun-Nim Misri, Fa^ bin Aia^, Bayazid Bistami 
and others. 

(б) Motausssetin — ^who were mentioned by Jami in his Nafliatnl Uns— 

such as Ma'inuddin Ohishti, Maulana Bumi, Jami, Fariuddin 
Attar and ‘Abdul Qacfir Jilani. 

.(c) Motaakhyrin — ^who were mentioned in modern books lilee Tasatif aur 
Islam by Maulana ‘Abdul Majid Bariabadi — such as Nizamuddin 
Awlia, §‘adi, Hafiz, Imam ‘Abul Qasim Kashrl. 

There are innumerable orders of the Sufis who may bo classified according 
to the principles and practices of the Pirs or according to the coimtry they 
live in. In India the most important of the Sufi orders are : — 

(jl) Ohishtia — (a) Nizamia section. 

(6) §abiii „ 

(2) Naqshbandia — fova Qayyums. 

(3) Qadiria — (a) Babul Shahi Section. 

(6) Maqim Shahi „ 

(c) Naw Shahi „ 

(d) Husayn 

(e) Myafi Khel 

(4) Suhrawardia — (a) Jalali Section. 

(b) Makhduml Section. 

(c) Ism'ail Shahi Section. 

(d) Dawala „ 



SOFiS AKD Mtrsic 


293 


(c) Lai ShaLi Section. 

(/) Easul ShabI ,, 

(6) Other orders — (a) Uwaysi Section. 

(6) Madari „ 

(c) Shattari „ 

(d) Qalandari „ 

(c) Malamati, etc.i 

The following aro the principal Sufis who have e:q)ressed their opinions 
on music either for or against ; Abu Naar Sarraj (one of first writers on SOfism 
in Arabic), Imiim Ghazali, Shaikh ‘All bin ‘Uthman Hudhwiri (first writer 
of Sufism in Persian), Junayd Baghdadi, Muhammad bin Taker, Sbihabuddin 
Suluaw^artB, Shaikh Aljmad Mujaddidi Naqshbandi, Khawja Nizamuddin 
Chishti and his followers like Kutubuddin, Fariduddin, Nizamuddin, Salim 
and others. Mohiuddin bin Arabi, Mohsin Fain, Abdur Rahman us Salami 
(author of Kitab us Sama‘), Dhun-Nun Misri, Abu Miduimmad Jorayri, 
Jalaluddin Rumi, ]\Iuslohuddin Sa(R and others. 

Imam Ghazali in his tw'o famous books Ihya-ul Vhim wa Din (Revival of 
sciences) and Kimia-i-Sa'adat (Chemistry of happiness) have advanced a 
philosophical background of music. In his chapter on music in Kimia, 
Ghazali has defined music as ‘the fire inside the stone*. It comes out when 
^ it is struck, and it bmiis the ‘wdiole forest*. Music is like a light emanating 
from insido a mine w’hich is the human heart. It reveals the beauty inside — 
it is 'Tanmuh\ Tanasub is the reflection of the beauty of the world. It 
reveals the ‘JamaV, ‘ jllimi* and ‘Tanosith’ of the universe — it is the umty of 
the two worlds. Music leads everything to finality. 

Then Imam Ghazali goes on arguing against the view-point of the Mullas. 
Ho says that Mullas arc of two kinds : 

?ahcriin (external), and 
Bateniin (internal), Ci^\ 

The former decides tilings by the external manifestations and the latter by 
what is latent. Accordingly Imam Ghazali, a Mulla, ordinarily thinks in terms 
of the ‘material’ (things apparent). Sufi defends music on the groimds that 
it leads to love of God and anything that brings man nearer to God is lawful; 
hence Sufis hold music as lawful. Whereas the Mullas hold that love may 
grow between the same species : a tiger may love a tiger, a sparrow may love 
another sparrow, a man may love another of the same species. As God has 
. no species or genus. He is beyond the sphere of love of man. Thus accortog 
^ to the Mullas, Sufis mislead themselves and others by pleading love of God 
as the basis and defence of music. They hold that love of God, if it may be 
so called, is to submit to His commands and to surrender to His wiU. Jn 
Islam the inherent idea is ‘surrender’; a Muslim is he who has slendered . 
Further the Mullas hold that love is a matter of reciprocity which is impossible 


1 Tasauf-i-Mam, by Abdul Majid, Azatagarh, p. 46. 



294 


B. C. BAW VOLUME 


between man and God. Man feels by five senses but God, being unlimited, is 
beyond the approach and reach of the fivo human senses wMch are but limited. 
So the Mullas who aro ‘?aheriin’ condemn music as is understood by the Sufis. 

To this. Imam Ghazali, in his chapter on ‘Mayiabbat’ (lovo), has given a 
very philosophical yet logical reply. The great Imam says that human heai^ 
can hardly remain empty; it always craves for association.- By nature, it 
wants to associate with things beloved. If tho heart is to lovo, the best lovo 
must be for the best of tho treasures — ^tho best treasure is certainly God. If 
does not love God, ho must by nature love something other than God, 
which is of lesser value than God. So according to Imam Ghaziili lovo of God 
is permissible. ^Further God has said in the Qiu'an : 

Yu hibbo hum o yu hibbuna hu. 

‘God loves them and they shall love God.’ ^ 

The Prophet has said: 

‘He has no religion who cannot love God and tho Prophet more than 
any of his possessions.’ 

Love has been permitted in the Qur'an as follows: — 



Qul inlcana abaokum w'a Abna wa Kum 
Wa Aldiawanulcum 


‘Love of God is more than the love of parents, children and brothers. 

Love by and through senses, as is understood by tho Mullas (?aheriin), 
the sensual love — ^physical love, and the object of love may be changed, trans- 
ferrable and transient. They are objects of the animal world. But beyond 
the five senses, which every animal possesses, there is yet another sense called 
the sixth sense which differentiates man from animal. It is through this sense 
that man can soar to the heights from which he can lovo God, and love of 
God may be best realized through music which reveals the hidden treasures 
inside the heart. 

Ghazali has classified music under tliree heads: — 

(1) Music as sports which is unlawful because it creates 

disturbance. 

■ (2) Music as delight ( oJU which has reference only to the joy of 
the heart for the sake of delight only. The green grass, running 
waters, budding flowers, singing birds please the five senses and 
make a man happy; and they are not tmlawfal. Why should 
music which pleases the sense of audition bo interdicted as 
unlawful ? Pleasure of the senses is perfectly justified in Islam ; 
music is a source .of delight of sense, pure and simple. 


1 lUumination in Islamic Mysticism, by E. J. Jurji, p. 44. 



STTS’iS AUD MXTSIO 


295 


(3) Music is permssible ( c'r* ) because the Prophet has set an example 
by enjoying it himself and allowing others to enjoy it. 

Imam Ghazali then quoted profusely the practices of the Prophet, specially 
the tradition of ‘A’yesha enjoying the performance of Abyssinian acrobat 
iiccompanied with music in front of his mosque. He has drawn five con- 
clusions from it, namely : 

(fl) (hlusic) ‘Sports’ may sometimes be enjoyed. 

(6) It may be enjoyed near a mosque. 

(c) It was a Idnd of request of the Prophet, because He asked ‘A’yesha 

if she would enjoy the acrobat’s performance. 

(d) The example proves that it is lawful to make women and children 

happy by giving them opportunity for enjoyment of sports. 

(e) Finally it was a command of the Prophet. 

bona Iram ya hard arfada babazi mashgul bashed. 

‘ Oh the children of Arfad (Abyssinia) 1 go on with performance.’ ^ 

So said the Prophet to the Abyssinian. 

Some say that Abyssinians were mere performers of feats of war and 
there is no reference to music. But Ghazali is definite that Abyssinian per- 
formance was accompanied with music, etc., which was a normal custom of 
the Abyssinian acrobats. 

• j oV^r 


Bazle janghian Raqas wa Sorud buda. 

‘The sport of the fighters was with music and dance.’ ® 

In Arabic, the oldest book on Sufism is Kitabul Tdiciuuflsy Abu 

Nasr Sarraj, which has discussed the question of music in Islam. The great 
author was known as Tawosul Foqara' (the peacock of the Sufis). Though 
the author has been referred to by famous writers like Fariduddin Attar and 
by Jami, yet his book could not be traced till Prof. Nicholson of Cambridge 
fotmd a manuscript of Kiidbnl Imn*ai with Mr. Elis.s He searched for 
another copy which was found in the British Museum. The learned pro essor 
compared the two manuscripts and produced a very nice edition of this amous 

hook* EitabulLum‘ai\ , , i.- t 

In the 9th chapter of this book, the author has discussed the question of 

music under the follovdng sub-heads : — 

(o) Varieties of music. 

(6) Diversity of opinions as to its import. 

(fi) Melody and audition. 

(d) Audience. 


^ Kimfa-i-S'a’adal, pp. 220~221. • a tt 

a CJomparo BuMiari’s Hadith published from Lahore m 1341 A.H.. p. 123. 
a CJopiod by Ahmad bin ?ah6ri, dated C38 A.H./1284 A.D. 



296 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


(e) Public and individual music. 

(/) Disciples and beginners in the art of music, etc., etc. 

Abu Nasr Sarraj has assigned a very high place to melody and music. 
He has based his defence of music on Hadith : i 

m ^ ♦ 

O 4£«IuV» 


Ma ba’ tha AUaho Nabiyan ilia Hasan as §aut. 


‘God has not sent any Prophet but with a melodious voice.’ 
Zayyeinul Qur'an a be nswatclmm. 


‘Beautify the Quran with melody.’ 


^ • t? 


\ ^ m ^ ^ ^ ^ 


Oil Ui^ <JJ1 U 


Ma azanallaho ta’allah lo Shayin 
Kama Azana lo Nabiyin Hasnas §aut. 


‘God has not given permission (so strongly) for anything as He has given 
permission to the Prophets for melody.’ 

Then the learned Sufi goes on discussing the different measures of music. 
He quoted the expressions of Sufis like Junayd Baghdach, Abul Hasan Nuri, 
Hudhwiri and others who enjoyed music. Like Ghazali ho supported music ' 

even when the common people enjoy them for mere delight ( oAJ ). Abh Nasr 
Sarraj enthusiastically quoted Hadith to show that ‘A’yesha, Abh Bakr, 
Belal and other great Sahiabis enjoyed music for mere delight as did the Prophet 
on ‘Id days with Daff. Malik bin Anas, ‘Abdullah bin Ja'far, ‘Abdullah bin 
‘Umar, Imam Shafi’i have been quoted to justify the recitation of verses and 
poems in melodious voice. 

Ab-Q, Nasr Sarraj has classified the audience { C 5 **L ) into three groups 
according to their personal capacity ; 

(«) liUyt j uIju:- Mubtadyan and Miuidan. (The beginners and the 
disciples.) 

(6) csJj ju. j cgL.^ Motawasetin and Siddiqin. (The advanced and the 
purists.) 

(c) cfiij'e ‘Arifin. (The mystics.) 


Finally the author has advanced very learned arguments both for and 
against music. 

Junayd Baghdadi, the famous Sufi, is of opinion that music by itself is 
not unlawful. But it becomes unlawful when it is not done properly; it 
becomes ‘Haram’. He insists on three factors which must be taken into 
serious consideration in giving judgment on music : 


1 "Whatever may he the authenticity of these Hadith, the fact that they are there, is 
enough to indicate the tendency of the traditionists in regard to music. 




SOFiS AND JITTSIC 


297 


(a) Zaman (Time). 

61.3 

(b) Makan (Place). 

uK. 

(c) Ikhwan (Company). 



U In times of prayer or in times of taking food, or ■wliile engaged in one’s 
duties, one should not enjoy music. 

In a dirty place, in a dark room, in the house of a tyrant, music mil 
cause pain instead of pleasure. So it should not be done there. 

Music may be enjoyed only in company of persons who are fit to enjoy it. 
Music should not he enjoyed with a person who is too much engaged in worldly 
affairs; with a person who has no music in his ears or who is unwilhng or 
inattentive — ^because in such company music will produce no effect. Junayd 
Baghda'dL says that great restraint must be maintained in the enjojunent of 
music. 

Shaikh ‘Al5 bin ‘Uthman HudhwM in his famous book ‘Kashful Mafijvb ’ 
(Withdrawal of the Screen) has discussed the question of music in the 25th 
chapter of his book. He has divided the chapter into ten sub-heads and has 
based his arguments in favour of music on the basis of‘Tartil’ (Science and 
art of recitation) of the Qur'an. 

Abdur Bahman Lahori in Ins book called KHab-iis 8ama‘ has supported 
music and has quoted the following authorities. 

'IkJiwanHs l^afa’ (Brethren of Purity) is an encyclopedic work in 60 
tractates. There is no particular author of this vast work, but the scholars 
are of opinion that it is a compOation of various authors who formed a 
society for the pursuit of holiness, purity and truth, and established 
amongst themselves a doctrine whereby they hoped to win the approval of 
God, maintaining that the religious law was defiled by ignorance and 
adulterated by errors, and that there was no means of cleansing and purifying 
it except philosophy, which united the wisdom of faith and the profit of 
research. They held that perfect result would be reached if Greek philosophy 
was combined with Arabic religion.^ The most important of this group is 
* Abu Solaiman Muhammad bin Ma’shar though Ibn ul Jaidi is claimed by 
some scholars to be the author. I have used the Persian translation by 
Maulana Ahm ad, a descendant of Imam Ja'far Sadiq (1304 A.H.). 

Ikimavi'us i§a/a has discussed music &om the Greek standpoint, the word 
Musiqa ( has been traced to Greek root ‘Maw’ — ^meaning ‘Sotmd’ 
and *Saqi’ meaning ‘Knots’. So it is a science of sound and notation ( A‘). 
Pythagoras has -written an excellent book on music (sound). Aristotle’s work 
on sound has been translated into Arabic by various scholars. According to 
Greek conception, sound is primarily connected -with the soul and not body. 
But when sound is rendered into rhjrthm, it establishes connection between the 
soul and body, and music comes out of this combination of soul and body. 
Then it is called ‘samd ’ — or what is kno-wn as audition. 


1' Bef. is to Tarikhul Hvkama, edited by Lippeit, 1, p. 83. 


298 


B. C. LAW VOLTJMB 


IhJtwanus ^afa tells that audition is the gift of God and the use of the 
gift of God is perfectly justified. . 



ijJJV » 


J 


A11n, di Ja'ala la kamus Saina* wal basara 
■ Wal afedata qalilum ma tash karun. 

‘ He (‘Allah) Who has given you the power of audition, the power of 
sight, the power of understanding, you be too thankful to Him.’ 

Ikhwan'&s ^afa mentioned the names of twelve Arabic notations and 
suggested their scientific background in consonance with the twelve planets in 
the constellation. Then there is a short discussion on Hindu notations which 
are three himdred and sixty in number and are based on mathematics, 
astronomy and astrophysics. Ikliwanus Safa is enthusiastic on music. 

Abfi Sa‘id Fadul ullah of Khurrasan — 367 A.H./967 AvD. — heard music 
and invited Sufis to join music with liim.^ 

Singing was practised in ‘Umar’s tomb by Shailch Abu’l Fa^ Hasan, in 
presence of Abu Sa‘id.* 

Qasharyia at first doubted the permissibility of audition but in the end 
followed it in the house of Abu Sa'id after a long discussion.® 

Sufis hold, as Nicholson writes, that progress in mystic life becomes 
quicker and easier through music.* 

Ibn-ul Farid says (Odes) : — (440 A.H./1050 A.D.) 

‘In music I behold my Beloved with all my being; I am riven 
asunder by the struggle of my spirit escaping from the body.’ 

Abu’l Qasim al Baghwi says : — 

‘Music is food for the spirit. When the spirit obtains its food, 
it attains its proper station and turns aside from the government of the 
body; then appears in the listener a commotion and a movement.’ 

Abu ‘Abdillah al Niyaji says : — 

‘Audition starts thought and produces admonition; all else is 
temptation.’ 

The author of Latayef says ® : — 

j(«_j J (JVu) oA* 


jPT 3I J J 1 J 


Studies in Mamie Mysticism, p. 3. a Ibid., p. 25. 

s Ibid., p. 34. * Ibid., p. 188. 

® Quoted in IhqSque Sama’, by Moulana ‘Abdul Bari, p. 19, 



SDriS AND MUSIC 


299 


4ijUa]l U jl j j^C3 j ^ ^^4" 

,•^1 y\ j j iJaL- j i-jjj** J Siy) J 

Jifl j/Ju .Uj^\ ijj; 

ji ^ <L\y^ J J lUl) JUC J 

jl J 1^1 jl _^S^1 jjlau«» (LL^VI oliJs ji ^ iiJ^jy^ j 

JtjII «..< 1?^ <^1_^>- j j2yj)l J c/j!1 ST^ 

J;rljr S tsi. pU. dJ^j jllil jl £ 4s^ tlr Jill ^Ikb ^ 

ai-L <c«i^ f J cri J* u^j J 

tjiU ^ . J * J » i_j» ojIac jl tirl j fl j>- <»*’ Crl £ 

e Xil vJ jf J>- I «A»jUeJl tJjjli Jliei jjU jl 

In fnqir nuuldat i ai stil dnr Inlitc qobbn-i nilagun o joregumbcd i glinrdun 
jior liurwur giuxlidnU o ba-inolazinmt-i nlcSbor-o rozgar rnsidah nz bazme 
no‘ynniiii-i cshuu jiira-i-flmsbidnb o kbcl‘at-i bimmatr o no'j’amat-i in klmb 
kcslifm dnr bar knsliidali lieclj kns az i-uifa-i bo sani'a na ynftali o Imina in 
nsbgbul dushtand agar chc b‘a^ nkfibcr o barldic-c-ainiitbir bo sam'n bam 
budand o Ickin inkar na dashtand o az innsbuikho ma taqaddam Ijia^-at sajddut 
Taifa o Abu Bakr Shibli o ni'aruf karkln o Sori Saqati o Bayazid o Abu Sa'yid 
Abul Kliair o ‘Abdulla da'if o Haji Sharif o *azizan-o ko tadhkiratul Awlia 
tna^viir and o buzurgaii-o ko dar tabaqut-ul-nsfJiia mastair nktbar az anho 
Rihob-o-sani‘a budand o az maahaikho molaakhkhor Ha^'at Shaikh Fariduddin 

0 qadi Haiuiduddin o Khwajah Kulubuddin o Shaikh Nizamuddin dor row’ayat- 

1 ^l.iihah kc az cshan rnsidah m'alum shudnh ko haina tawajud kardnand o 
raqs farmudah pas-har kc saiu'a ra munker bashad o kariim good pas goftah 
bashad ko in liaiuah aivalia iiiokab-c-hnrani kordah biishad ? 0 in soklmn az 
‘adawnl bfid, '0 niaji'uda walian faqad bainzani bil mohiirebah’ ba Haqt'ala 
Ijarb kardnh biishand.* 

I, this fnqir for thirty years, moved like a compass beneath the blue slvy 
and the moving doom and in the service of the groat men of the time and I tasted 
hits of grace of their assembly and I put upon myself the cloth of their courage 
and grace of those gentlemen. I have not found any of that assembly to bo 
without audition and all were engaged in this (music). Even if any of them did 
not hear music, but ho did not prohibit it. And many of the old shailth, such as 
Hadrnt Sayadut Ttiifa (Junn,yccd Baghdadi), Abu Bala- Shibli, M'aruf Karkhi, 
Sari Saqati, Buyazid, Abu Sa'yid Abul Khair, ‘Abdulla d'aif, Haji Sharif and 
tho.se who have boon mentioned in Tadhiralul Awlia and ^aha-qahilAsfia , — 
were men of music of the modem (Shaildis), Shaikh Fariduddin, Qadi Hamid- 
uddin, Khwaja Qutubuddin and Shaikh Nizamuddin are found, on correct 
authorities, to have enjoyed ecstasy and dance. Those who are prohibitionists 

1 4>jl« 



300 


B. C. IjAW VOIiTTME 


and condemn it as unlawful, say that all these awlias (lovers of God) were 
performers of unlawful things. This is something of enmity, for the Prophet 
told, ‘He who has been enemy to the lovers of God, fights with God.’ 

Bedan ke dar istema‘e sarod ikhtelafe foqaha ast. Imam Shaf‘i o Shamsul 
aemmai serakhsi az foqahae Hanafiah o Shaikh Abu Yazid Bistami o Shaikh - 
Ibn-e-*Arabi qael ba hall and o tafsilash dar mowd*a ast. Pas iltizam-e- 
shimidan-e-ghena’ bar har mmid lazim nist che bar kas liyaqat an nadarad, 
o hale an mashrut ast, bachand sharut o yaftah shudnash dar hamah kas 
ghair mumkin, o an shorut in ast: — ^ke daran raghbat ba dunya o ^khre 
fawahish o tariqe lahwe o mahfil-e-fiissaq o majm'ai niswan na bashad o 
same‘a az aide nafs na bashad o shunidanash baiz-har-e-fakhr o rca nabashad 
o izhar-e-ojd badarogh na nomayed o ta bamaqdur dabt karda bashad o qalbash 
pur az ‘ishq-e-khuda bashad ke ghina maskane qalbe oo (jl) bashad che 
naghmah ra tathirat ast kathirah pas agar in sharut dar zate khud jam‘a 
darad pas oora mubah ast o chun shaikh oo iltizame sem*a midarad o oo 
jam'eush shorut pas iltezam an awla ast o bedun ijtem'a shorut haram lakin 
darin zaman jam'eush shorut naderul wajud ast lehada foqha hukm bahurmat 
an dadah and mutlaqan o fil haqiqat-'Laisa hakada bal le ahleha halalun 
o leghaireha haram.’ 

Maulana Nizamuddin Muhammad Sahalvi says in Manaqah-i-Bezzaqia?- 

0 ft 

4ll J j j) 

joljOl 

jl ( JjIA) of vsjU ^JS' Jk o-»J J* J* J* 

^ (SaavI (^1 J j[JP jjtjJlA 4l3\« J 

^ J jLi J J ^J ^\ y J J 

j\p>\ J .w\j »lj J jLs J JaI jl J jilj 

^ x»li la»- J-Sp jl J. J JsjJs jjSaZ \7 J JLilc 4.* 

ji Crl _^1 t oljju It b 4:5* JLil jl fc_JS ^ 

J J * b ijli ^ i «jyli. 

o J c:***! J_jl jT ^IjOl I 

*1^ Ijf) ii**» j'sli ^1^ C\*j Crl i^V 

« ^1_;>- J J^l»- I^IaV Jl <ijJ-l J J l2lla» Jjl ojli jl 

1 Ibid., p. 7. 


SDPiS AND MUSIC 


301 


^ 4»,i^ Know ye I regarding music there is difference 

amongst the jurists (Foqaha). Imam Shafi' and. Shamsul ‘Ayema Sarkhasi 
from the Hanafi jurists, and. Shaikh Abu Yazid. Bistami and. Saikh Ihn i 
Arabi — all these jurists admit its permissibility. You may find, the details 

in these places But it is not necessary for every follower to take to 

audition as his way. How can those who do not deserve it (hear it) ? 
And its permissibility depends on certain conditions. It is impossible to 
get all those conditions in every man. These are the conditions. (The 
hearer) must not have (1) love of material world, (2) not remember evil 
things, (3) not be in the way of bad sports, (4) not be in the company of 
bad men, (6) not be in the assembly of fallen women, (6) not be a man of 
flesh, (7) audition must not be for pretension of spirituality, (8) its appearance 
shall not be for display of ecstasy, (9) as far as possible, should be controlled, 
(10) heart will be full of absolute love of God — so that the song will 
make his soul clean. Wonderful are the effects of tunes and notes. 

And if he had collection of all these conditions, for him the music is 
permissible. If his Shaikh (teacher) take the way of music, and he fulfills 
all the conditions, then the imposition (acceptance) of the way of music 
is better. If all these conditions are not there, music is not justified ( )• 

But in this age a collection of all these conditions is hardly found. For 
this jurists have opined in favour of non-permissibility. But really the 
fact is not that. It is permissible for those who deserve it and prohibited 
for those who are otherwise. 

Dhun-Nun, the Eg 3 q)tian says: ‘Audition is a divine influence (warid 
ul-haqq) which stirs the heart to seek God: those who listen to it spiritually 
(bahaqq) attain imto God (tahaqaqa), and those who listen to it sensually 
(ba-nafs) fall into heresy (tazandaqa).’ Tliis venerable Sufi does not mean 
that ‘audition is the cause of attaining unto God, but he means that the auditor 
ought to hear the spiritual reality, not the mere sound, and that the divine 
influence ought to sink into his heart and stir it up. One who in that audition 
follows the truth will experience a revelation whereas one who follows his lower 
soul (nafs) will be veiled and will have recourse to interpretation (ta’wil).’ ^ 

Shibli says: ‘Audition is outwardly a temptation (fitnah) and inwardly 
an admonition (ibrah) : he who knows the mystic sign (isharah) may lawfully 
hear the admonition; otherwise, he has invited temptation and exposed himself 
to calamity — ^i.e. audition is calamitous and a source of evil to any one whose 
whole heart is not absorbed in the thought of God. ’ Abu’ ‘Ali Budbari said, 
in answer to a man who questioned him concerning audition: ‘Would that I 
were rid of it entirely because man is unable to do every thing as it ought to 
be done, and when he fails to do a thing duly he perceives that he has failed 
and wishes to be rid of it altogether.’ 

Be. tho principles of audition, Hudwiri is of opinion that ‘ no fixed law 
should be laid down for one and all, and that it should be decided by the 


1 lalamio Sufism, by S. Ikbal, pp. 269-270. 


302 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


capacity of the singer and hearer. What is “Ilahi” (Divine) for a man of 
pure heart becomes “Lahi” (frivolous) for a man of loose morals. As men 
differ in their temperament, permission to enjoy music should be given very 
carefully and cautiously.’ He has divided the hearers (mustami’in) into 
two classes: — 

(а) those who hear the spiritual meaning, 

(б) those who hear the material sound. 

Those who hear music and follow the truth ( ) they are justified, and 

those who enjoy the effervescence (OUe ), they are false ( Jl»l 

The whole of this topic has been well illustrated by the story of David 
which runs as follows : — 

‘God made David His vicegerent and gave him a sweet voice and caused 
his throat to be a melodious pipe so that wild beasts and birds came from 
mountains and plains to hear him, and the water ceased to flow and the birds 
fell from the air. It is related that during a month’s space, the people who 
were gathered round him in the desert ate no food, and the children neither 
wept nor asked for mUk, and when the folk departed it was found that many 
had died of the rapture that seized them as they listened to his voice. One 
time, it is said, the toll of the dead amoimted to seven hundred maidens and 
twelve thousand old men. Then God, wishing to separate those who listened 
to the voice and followed their temperament from the followers of the truth 
(ahl-i haqq) who listened to the spiritual reality, permitted Iblis to work his 
will and display his wiles. Iblis fashioned a mandoline and a flute and 
took up a station opposite to the place where David was singing. David’s 
audience became divided into two parties: the blest and the damned. 
Those who were destined to damnation lent ear to the music of Iblis while 
those who were destined to felicity remained listening to the voice of David. 
The spiritualists (ahl-i-ma*ni) were conscious of nothing except David’s voice, 
for they saw God alone; if they heard the Devil’s music, they regarded it as a 
temptation proceeding from God, and if they heard David’s voice, they 
recognized it as being a direction from God; wherefore they abandoned all 
things that are merely subsidiary and saw both right and wrong as they 
really are. When a man has audition of this kind, whatever he hears is lawful 
to him.’ 

' Famous Sufi saints like Khawaja Mu'inuddin Chishti (founder of the 
Ohishtia Cult), Shaikh ‘Abdul Qadfr Jilani (fotmder of the Qadiriah School), 
Shaikh Shihabuddin Suhrawar^ (fotmder of the Suhrawardi sect) and Shaikh 
Ahmad Sayyid (the founder of the Naqshbandi order) who have large number 
of followers, have given their opinions of music. 

• In India, the Chishtia is the most famous of all Sufi orders. It was 
introduced into India by Khawaja Mu'inuddin Chishti bom in 1142 A.D. He 
came to India with the army of Sultan Muhammad Ghori in 1192 A.D. and 


^ Islamic Sufism, S. Ikbal, p. 280; Thou^ Sarda Ikbal has used Khusfui Majhuh of Hujwiri, 
he had not the courtesy to recognize it clearly. 



SUFIS jVNB music 


303 


two years after settled at Ajmir opposite to the famous Hindu pilgrimage of 
Hushliar where he left lus earthly remains at the ripe age of 96. Of his spiritual 
descendants a large number have been recognized as 'Cherags’ (lights)— such 
as Qutubuddin of Delhi, Fariuddin of Shakarganj, Jalaluddin of Panipath, 
ilTizamuddin Awlia of Ballth, Muhammad Sadiq of Gungoh, Shaildi Sahm of 
Fatehpur. The order is famous for adoption of music as a part of their 
religious system and they think that the nearest cut &om men to God is 
through music. They have been branded often as heretics by the orthodox 
for their extremely eclectic and free views. Nizamuddin Awha, whose real 
name was Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Daniyal al Bukhari, was one of the 
most notable Muslim saints who is respected even today by the Hindustanis 
irrespective of castes and creeds. His views on music have been expressed in 
his ‘Fatuhat’ (collection of letters) now embodied in Panj Ganja Chishtia. He 
says that music is ‘Mobah’. In Biyar nl Awlia, it is told that Nizamuddiu 
Awlia was once questioned about the propriety of music. He enthusiastically 
supported it and produced some Ha^th on this behalf. Mullas refused to 
accept these Hacfrth, and the saint cursed them with pestilence which visited 
them later on. This is also mentioned in Fmshia. He appointed salaried 
Qawwals to sing in his hamlet. Hizamuddin’s view may be summarized as 
follows: — 

Music by itself is not ‘haram’, but common people may make it 
‘haram’ by applying it for prohibited things. For the better class 
people who are in the way of God, it is ‘mobaf: for the Sufis it is 
‘Musta^jibab’; for the lover of God it is ‘Halal*. A Chishtia upholds 
‘the hearing of harmonious sounds moves the heart and kindles the fire 
of love for God’. ^ 

Author of Biyar ul Awlia says, ‘I went and sat in front of a tomb. The 
spfritual musical performances in the congiugation were of its highest order 
and the singers and Sflfis were excited.’ ® 

Shaikh Burhan (1462-1662) delighted in music.® 

Myan Shaikh Mohiuddin Abu Yusuf (1602-1689) enjoyed music and 
even Aurangzeb slackened his rigours of the ban of music against him and he 
enjoyed it in spite of the ban.^ 

The Naqshbandfi order is against music, but it does not say that music is 
absolutely unlawful. Bahauddin Naqshbantfi says; — 

jK” jT ^ j ^ 

Na in kar mi kunam o na an kar mi kunam 

‘I do not do this nor do I do that (neither haram nor halal).’ ® 

Between the prohibition of Naqshbandi order and the liberty of the 
Chishtia stands the middle course of Shaikh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi. 


1 Sufism, its saints and shrines, by John A. Sobbon, Lahore, p. 215. 
s Sayir-ul-Awlia, p. 316. * AKbyar, p. 326. 

* Mirat-i Ahmadt, p. 69. ® Jowliz-i-Sama', p. 21. 


304 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


Shaikh ‘Abdul Qaddr Jilani, tho founder of the Qadiriah sect, in the 6th 
chapter of his book FatJivl Ohaib has discussed the question of music. 

The learned Sufi in the 2nd chapter of his famous book 'Awarifiil M'aarif 
says that the Qur‘an and Hadith should bo recited in a melodious voice. 

Shihabuddin Suhi'awardi says that those who oppose music do not lmowi> 
the life and actions of the Prophet and of tho Sababis. As such music should 
not be condemned.! 

He says in his ‘Awarif* advising his son in regard to music: — 

Ya Bonaia la tun kerois sama*. 

‘0 mj’^ son, do not reject music.’ 

Of the Persian Siifis, a largo number of them have discussed tho subject 
of music, though as a class tho Persians are Shi'as, and tho Shi'as are generally 
opposed to music. The Persian Sufis are enthusiastic supporters of music. 
Eumi says that tho whole universe came out of soimd - ijV) and to 
this eternal sound, tho world will ultimatclj^ dissolve. Maulana Rumi says: — 

j j.j liV-* 3'j 

f'i ^j. f.f 

Baz pinhan ast andar zir o bam 
pash agar guyam jahan barham zanam. 

‘The mystery is hidden in the subtle and coarse notes. 

If I reveal them, the creation will be dislodged.’ 

Further the Great Maulana Bumi conceived the whole life of a man 
and the musical notes are but the call of the body by tho soul. 

Bishnu az nay chun hekayet mikunad 
Waz judai ha shekayet mikunad. 

S'adi says in Bustan : — 

J>“ J J fh” jr, <311^ 

js Ci^j 

Jahan pur sama’ ast o masti o shor, 

0 lekin chebenad dar ay’anie kor. 

‘This world is full of music, ecstasy and notations; but what can a blind 
man look through the mirror ? ’ 

Further the great savant says: — 

J6- t5" £/, 3* 

j' 3 I 


1 IhqSqits Sama', by ‘Abdul Bail, p. 18. 



DEVAPUTRA 


305 


Agar az biirje ma’m buad sair-e-oo 
Ferisbta fero manad az tair-e-oo. 

'If the musician soars up to the pinnacle of ecstasy, the angel caimot 
follow in pursuit of him.’ 

S'adi has drawn beautiful comparison between camel and man. who does 
not appreciate music and has condemned the man as something lower than 
animal. 

Appreciation of music by the Persian poets caimot be better expressed 
than by the following words of the great Persian Sufi: — 

jS J4ji j j|Js if jj. frjj 

& IS... 

Ru-em ba ru-i dilbar o Qawwal dar sarod, 

Dastam badast-e-shahid magsud dar sama’. 

‘The eyes were fixed on my beloved’s and the musician was on his 
song; my hand resting on the hand of my love in rapturous song.’ 


DEVAPUTRA i 

By 

Dr. E. W. Thomas, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., C.I.E. 

I. AppeiiLATioh op Ku^aha Kikqs 

It is commonly thought that the designation devaputra, ‘god-son’, applied 
in India to the kings of the Kusana dynasty, was copied from the ancient 
Chinese imperial title, THen-tz&, ‘Son of heaven’. Justification of this view 
caimot be found in any novelty in the very widespread notion of divine descent 
of kings and emperors: even in Homer the kings are ‘Zeus-bom’ (Sioyev^s); 
nearer to India in space and much nearer to the Ku^pas in time, the title 
flcos, ‘god’, was borne by Ptolemy VI in 164r-146 B.C., as also by a Parthian 
Arsakes on the Indian border; an earlier Parthian, hfithradates 11, was 
■ flcos evepyerijs, another, Mithradates III, was Beos rfvarcDp, and a third and 
fourth, Phraates II and III, were BeoTrarcop, *god-fathered’, their fathers 
having perhaps been apotheosized;, in India every king was deva. The 
^justification would be sought in the historical fact that the designation 

I The view that devaputra was not on imitation of the Chinese imperial title 'Son of heaven’, 
but should be understood in its Indian sense, was propounded and discussed in a draft chapter 
on the ‘Kuriian Empire’ submitted to the Editor of the ‘Cambridge History of India’, Vol. H, 
in 1922, and it was thence noticed by Prof, de la Vallie Poussin in his admirable L'Inde aux 
temps des Mauryas (1930, p. 312). In view of the fact that the publication of the volume has 
not yet (1944) taken place, and also of M. Livi’s valuable article discussed below, a further 
treatment of the subject is here essayed. 

20 



306 


B. 0. LAW VOLTTME 


appears first with the Kusapas, whoso ancostors had migrated from the vicipity 
of China and whoso empire, when it took shape, was in commnnication and 
contact ■with that Power. A possible fallaciousness in the reason, however, 
appears upon consideration of the historical facts. 

It is possible that the nomadic Yueh-chih people of the first quarter of tl®' 
second century B.C., when inhabiting ICan-su (between the later Tun-huang 
and Kan-chou) had heard of the Chinese, who wore still at a distance from 
their coimtry; although the Chinese maj' scarcely have heard of them, since it 
was indirectly, from the Hsiung-nu (see Wylio, Jouj'naZ of the Anthropological 
Instiinte, HI (1874), p. 415, and De Groot, Die Hunnen der vorchristlichen Zeit, 
I, pp. 76-7), that the Chinese court loamod of their defeat by the Hsiung-nu 
in 176 B.C. and (only dm'ing the period 140-134 B.C.) of their migration, 
c. 140 B.C., to the west.i But it seems hardly doubtful that both in Kan-su 
and during the earlier part of their sojourn in the wost the Hsiung-nu loomed 
larger than the Chinese in then' minds. Towards the close of the fii’st century 
B.C. a Chinese text {Shih-chi, c. 123, § 98, trans. Hirth, op. cit.) complains of 
the greater deference sho'vs'n by the peoples west of Parghana towards the 
Hsiung-nu, ‘indeed they were more afraid of the Hsiung-nu than of the Chinese 
ambassadors’. Even in Chinese Turkestan the Hsiimg-nu influence was 
during the whole middle half of the first century A.D. superior to that of the 
Chinese; so that king Hsien of Yarkand, who from 38 to 60 A.D. was ‘master 
of all the Sta'tes east of the Pamir’ and at times also of Pamir Sakas and of 
Ta-yiian (Farghana), was Imown in neighbouring States as ‘the Shan-yu’, this 
being the Hsiung-nu royal title.® Among the Hsiung-nu themselves, when 
they began to break up, there were at one period as many as five rival 
Shan-yu’s. Now the Hsiung-nu Shan-yu was also entitled, we are told,® 
‘Son of heaven’, whether an indigenous notion or borrowed in ancient times 
from the Chinese. If the Kusanas of the first century A.D. had invested 
their rulers competitively ■with the title ‘Son of the gods’, it would have 
been in opposition to the Hsiung-nu rather than to the Chinese that the 
claim was made. 

II. As AN Indian term 

But we should not overlook the fact that devaputra is an Indian term, 
not invented by, or for, the Kusanas. With the meaning ‘god-son’ it is found 
in the ^g-Veda.^ In the inscriptions of Bharaut, long prior to the Kusanas, 
it occurs with a meaning which Professor Liiders conjecturally {lAst of Bralimi 
Inscriptions, nos. 774, 814) renders by ‘angel’, as Speijer had done in his trans- 
lation of the Jdtaka-mdld (see Index). The Pali has it as an old standing 
appellation of Mara, god of love and death, and also in a ■wider, classificatory, 
use.® With the Buddhists of about the fourth century A.D. the devaputra^B 

1 Hirth, J^OMmaZ of the American Oriental Society, 37 (1917), p. 93; Do Groot, op. cit,, H, p. 9. 

® See Chavannes in T'oung-pao, 1907, p. 108. 

3 See ■VS^ylie, J-. Anthropol. Institute, III (1874), p. 410; Porker, China Review, XX, pp. 8-9; 
De Groot, op. cit,, I, pp. 63-4; K. Shixatori in Memoirs of the . . , Toyo Bunko, I, pp. 8, 11. 

3 X, 62. 4, 3 See the Pali Dictionary, s.v. 

ZOB 



devaptitba 


307 

I 

were a class of divinities, distinguished, but not consistently, from the TaJtsa’s 
and having representatives in most countries, as particularized at length in a 
list contained in the GandragarbJia-s'iitra (see L6vi in B.!6.F.d’E.-0., V, 
pp. 264:-8). 

L6vi, however, who has discussed the term devaputra with citation of 
valuable new materials (Journal Asiatique, CCXXIV (1934), pp. 1-21), held 
(p. 15) nevertheless that, as,a royal title, it was borrowed, from the Chinese,^ 
by the Eusanas, for whom with its proper Indian signification it would have 
been humiliating, not a cause of pride. The point of this observation is, 
however, blunted when we note that devapuira was never, at any rate in 
early times, adopted by the Kusanas as an official title. It never appears on 
any of their coins, its reading on a coin of Elujula Kara Kaphsa being an 
error.2 Wima Kadphises is maharaja rajadiraja sarvaloga-iivara mahiivara, 
but never devapuira', Kani^ka is hasileus basileon, shaonano shoo, but never 
devapuira, and the lilte appUes to all his successors. Even in the Peshawar 
Casket inscriptions, 8 which are our nearest approach to a document 
officially authorized on the part of Kaniska, the title devapuira is wanting. 
Moreover — and this is a remarkable fact — ^neither the Chinese nor any other 
foreign sources betray an awareness of a title ‘Son of heaven’ applied to the 
Kusana kings, at least until a comparatively late period, when, in a translation 
of an Indian Buddhist text (see infra, pp. 16 sqq.), they were included among 
the four, regional, ‘great kings’, who were ‘Sons of heaven’. How comes it 
then that the title is so commonly present in dedicatory and other inscriptions 


1 Levi’s suggestion (pp. 18.9} of on Tranian intermediEuy is based upon tbe occurrence 
of the term Pypwr, as probably a Pahlavi form = baypitfir, in one of the early Sogdian letters 
recovered by Sir A. Stein from the Chinese limes in Kan-su and edited by Professor Beichelt in 
Die Soghdischen Handschriflenreste des Britisehen Museums, U (see Glossary, p. 47). Apparently 
(see Sohwentner in ZDMG. 93 (1938), p. 88) L6vi has been followed in this opinion by Professor 
Sohaeder {OrienUtlische Literaturzeitung, XLI (1938), col. 698), who regards the form Baypur 
as ‘Saka’ and concludes that it was brought by the Yflch-chih in their original migration from 
the Chinese border in Kan-su, In the letter the term is thought to be used as a collective 
designation of the Chinese, and literally it might tranelste, no doubt, the Chinese expresaon 
‘Son of Heaven’. But /Say = ‘god’ seems not to be known in ‘Saka’. 

Kven apart from the unfounded suppontion that the speech of the Yiioh-chih in Kan-su 
was ‘Saka’ (or Iranian of any hand), the suggested intermediary seems unconfirmed and 
improbable. Tlie Sogdian letter can hardly be dated earlier than c. 160 AJD., since it mentions 
Krorayina (Beichelt, U, p. 4), a Chinese colony whereof the foundation was not even proposed 
before 119 A.D. (see Chavannes in T’oung-pao, H, vi (1908), pp. 248, 261-2, and cf. Beichelt, 
p. 6). At that date the designation devapuira had been in common application to the Kusanas 
during about 70 years (inscription of c. 79 A.D. in J’.B.A.S., 1914, pp. 976-6); and, as concerns 
a ‘Saka’ source, the outstanding fact is that neither deeaputra nor Pxypur nor any equivalent 
■ is ever evidenced or inferable in regard to any preceding or subsequent ruler of known Saka 
affinity until wo come to Maralbashi jesdampura of c. 700-800 AJD., whoso title, like the 
gyasta-vura noted infra, is derived from the. Sanskrit ospression, devapuira. Also the equation 
Bypwr = ‘Son of Heaven’ seems liigUy questionable. Can it denote ‘the [Chinese] officialB’ 7 
Even the addressee of a letter is Byvmutew, ‘god-lord’, and ‘god-son’. 

s This is stated after consultation with Mr. Allan, who has re-examined the coins on'which 
Cunningham had read the title . 

s See Spooner in A.S.I. Beport, 1909-10, pp. 135-144, and Konow, KharosJithi Inscriptions, 
pp. 136 sqq. 




308 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


dated in the Knniska era and oven in an inscription on the base of the statue 
of perhaps a Kusana king, and on a statue of Kaniska himself, set up in the 
Ku§ana Valhalla at Mathura ? ^ It must be that devaputra was not a titlcj 
but a complimentaiy epithet, current only among the Indian subjects of the 
Kusa^ias and therefore with its Indian meaning. Similarly, though* ever^ 
Indian king was addressed as deva, wo shall not &ad an Indian king referring 
to liimself as deva, any more than an English king styling himself ‘My Majesty’ 
or ‘Our Majesty’. It is noticeable that even in the third to fourth century 
Kharosthi documents from Chinese Turkestan the term devapiiira occurs only 
in datings and in references to the kings by other persons, and not in direct 
communications from the Icings, such communications commencing simply 
tnahanvava maharaya liliaii. 

Had the Indians any particular conception when they initiated the fashion 
of referring to the Kusaria kings as devapuira, a designation wliich they do 
not seem to have applied to the preceding Greek, Sake or Pahlava rulers ? 
The term is evidently classificatory, and it must denote a class of beings 
belonging to the dcva-world, but not sufficiently distinct or limited in number 
to be included in the closed list of the Thirty-three. There are some indica- 
tions that the devapuira’s were divinities having special functions, depart- 
mental beings: the two citations of the term in the Jdlaka-mala of ^ura 
(tr. Speijer, pp. 94, 135) refer to the devaputra's in charge of the rains ; it is notice- 
able also that in a Saka-Khotani text (J iidMolHd/mmJi?) edited, with translation, 
by Leumaim {Bnddhistische Liiemtw, I: NebenstUcke, pp. 167-162) the term, 
translated gyaetavura, along with gyastassaa = devamia (pp. 157, 1. 40, 168, 
11. 24, 34-6), is applied to the Sun and Moon,2 who with the other heavenly 
bodies are definitely included among the Caturmaharajakayika gods, typical 
devapiUra’B (see Abhidhanna-koda, tr. de la ValI6e Poussin, in, p. 169). In the 
Pali Dictionary we find note of another particular function attributed, in 
Buddhism, to devapuira’s: this is that of acting as a sort of guardian angel to 
arhats', an instance being the Kakudho devapuUo of the Vinaya-piiaka {Gvlla, 
VII, 2, 2) : even the throne seat Iftodlii-manda) whereon Buddha attained his 
Enlightenment had been constructed by devapiiira's {devaputrehi nirmiia, 
Maha-vastu, HI, p. 276, 11. 1-2). The devaputa Arhadgupta of Liiders’ List 
proclaims this function by his very name, a Pralcrit compoimd = ‘Arhat' 
protector’. 

The devaputra’s, whom by reason of their multitude — devapidramkasrqni 
dharanlye praii§thita {Maha-vastu, III, p. 276, 1. 3) — ^we may define as ‘mis- 
cellaneous devas’, were in danger of being confused with two other groups of 
divine beings, namely the dem’s proper and the yahsa’s. The Pali Jdtaka 
commentary (HI, p. 261, 1. 12) goes so far as to identify the two terms — 
devo ca ndma devaputto. In any case the two belong to the same pari§ad — 
api ca kho devapuUo devaparisdyam dhammam deseti {Aitguttara-nikdya, H, 
p. 186, 3). . 


1 See A.S.I. Beport, 1911-12, pp. 120 sqq. 

^ In the Suvaroaprabhasottama-siUra oleo (XV, v. 72) the sun (/sUryendro) is a devapuira. 


DEVAPUTRA 


309 


Sometimes the Buddhists may have sought to depreciate the Brahmanical 
deities by using devaputva in place of devd'i in the Lalitavistava (ed. hfitra, 
p. 2) — MalieivarapramuTelidn apranteydn d&octpuirdn ‘countless devapuira’s, 
headed by Mahe^vara’ — and pp. 127-8, wiaAeiworo dcvaputrahiuddTidvdsahdyiTidn 
-^evaputTdn dmantTyaivam alia ‘the devapviTa MaheSvata thus addressed the 
devaputra’s of the ^uddhavasa heaven*. 

Similarly in the Suvarnaprabhdsotfama-s'dlra, VI (ed. Nobel, pp. 85, 91), 
the d&vaputra Mahe^vara is no less a person than the great god 6iva. But the 
outcome may be the opposite of this, as when Buddha himself is said to have 
been {Jataha, IV, pp. 100-4) a devaputta. The Fo&sa’s, terrestrial powers with 
largely, it seems, local connections, may as a class have suffered from a draw- 
back by reason of their familiarity in popular worship, where their grotesque, 
pot-bellied, images and frequently malignant disposition confined them to a 
low order of divinity (Foucher, L*Art greco-bouddhique du QandJidra, 11, 
pp. 40 sqq., Coomaraswamy, Yaksas, pp. 4^8). Yet even as a class they are 
described in the Dlgha-nihdya (XX, 7—9, Vol. II, p. 266, where their groups are 
specified) as ‘of various complexion, miraculous power, brilliant (jutimanto), 
fine-complexioned, glorious (yasassinoy, and elsewhere also their brilliance is 
mentioned: and when Saklta = 6akra and Vessavana=Vaifravana are reckoned 
as yahkJuda (Pali Dictionary and Maj§Mma-rbikdya, 37), evidently the sense is 
not far different from that of dem\ and the close contact of the term with 
devaputra is shown not only by frequent connection of the two and by identifica- 
tion of them (yakkho ii devaputto in the Petdvatthu commentary, 113), but also 
by alternation, as when Buddha, a devaputta as shown above, is in Milinda- 
paUho (trans. Rhys Davids, I, p. 289, n. 2) a yakkha. 

The most conspicuous case of identification of devapidra and yaksa is that of 
the four'Regentsofthe Quarters’ (difc-pofo), who by the Buddhists are named 
the ‘ Four Great Kings ’ (Oaturmalidrdja), viz. Dhrtarastra, VirucUiaka, Virupaksa 
and Vai^ravana. If we disregard Mara, these seem to be the divinities,who in 
Pali are most frequently designated devaputta. Yet on the Bharaut stupa 
Virudhaka and VaiSravana (Kupira = Kuvera) are both figured as yakkha’a. 
It seems likely that the change evidenced by the Pali texts had been by way 
of promotion. Discharging functions which in Brahmanism were exercised 
by (eight) great deva'a, of whom one was identical with Vaifravana, they 
were clearly raised above the ordinary yaksa'a of more limited, or quite local, 
authority: they became ‘great yaksa’a’ or ‘yofcso-kings’ or the ‘four great 
kings’. Kuvera, in particular, as regent of the north, controller of wealth 
and associate of 6iva, demanded a high consideration. The Buddhist cos- 
mology has systematized this: in the AbMdliarma-koia, the most authoritative 
source, an intermediate place is found ^ for the Caturmaharajilca deities on the 
fourth terrace of Mt. Meru (and the other great motmtains), above the 
Gaturmahdrdjakdyika’s, who include the yafcsa% and below the Tliirty-three, 


1 Soo trans. by do la Valleo Poussin, m, pp. 169-101. In tlio SuvarvaprabhSsotlama-sutra 
a whole chapter (VI) is dovotod to tho Caturmaharajas. 


310 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


who were too long established to be displaced in the system. The system was 
snfficiently practical to allow of popular local distinctions between certain 
deities who enjoyed a rather superior respect, and who accordingly were 
styled devaptiira’s, and others, Oandharva% Yahsa% Naga’s, etc. ranking 
lower. The distinction is carried out in the long list of coimtries, Indian andlf 
Central-Asian, cited from the CandragarbJia-sfdra by L6vi in his early article, 
published in B.lli.F.d’E.-0.,- V (see pp. 264-8). Here most of the countries are 
provided with names of divinities belonging to the several classes, and in 
each case the devap^tira'a, where present, head the list. 

Naturally, however, nothing could prevent the exaltation of individual 
members of the several classes. Even in India, for reasons already mentioned, 
Kuvera overtopped the other three world-regents. As Vaifravana, he attained 
in Central Asia a commanding status in the Buddhist pantheon: in Khotan 
he had been from the beginning the chief deity of the country, supposed to 
have presided over the foundation of the State; and in the eighth centurj’^ he 
was there a ‘lord of Tahsa’s ’, a ‘rfet'o-king’, a ‘great long ’, ‘long of the northern 
region’, and even a Taihagaia (Thomas, Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents) 
I, pp. 12, 181, 202, 263, 256, 307, 314). His associate, Sri-devi, who in Jataka 
No. 382 (text, III, p. 257) is Siri-deviya, a devadhttd (feminine of devapnita), 
daughter of Dhatarattha = Dlirtarastra, one of the foim ‘Great Kings’, or 
‘World-regents’, held a corresponding rank.i 

m. Application op the tebm to the Kusanas 

From these considerations it appears that the title devapntra, whether 
understood in a general sense or as referring to some particular divinity, could 
not in application even to the great Kusana lungs have been demeaning. But 
in which sense was it actually applied ? If the Indians had been struck by 
some vague similarity between the figures of the grand Taksa’a, exemplified by 
the Farkham and other statues, and those of the burl}'" Kusana longs, they 
would have seen in the superior title, devaputra, a more acceptable connotation. 
Or were they t hinkin g in particular of Kuvera, who, as regent of the north and 
god of wealth, would have been an apt prototype of the northern potentates, 
with their lavish gold coinage, and whose images (see Vogel in Bulletin de 
VtScoU Francaise d’FxHme Orient, HI, pp. 149-163, and Foucher, DArt 
Ch’ico-Bouddhique dii Gandhdra, II, pp. 118-120) tend to have a gwasi-Scythian 
physiognomy? Alvaghosa does indeed address his ‘great king Kanilva’ as 
‘guardian of the northern heaven’ {MaJiaraja-Kanika-lekha, v. 47). Or did 
they mean even Siva-mahe^vara, whom we have seen styled devaputra and 
who is the sole deity figured on the coins of Wima Kadphises ? , 

Possibly it may be helpful to note that the Buddhist texts extracted by 
L6vi (‘Notes sur les Indo-soythes’, Jmimal Asiatique, IX, viii (1896), pp. 444 


1 OSio devakanya'B and devaduhitr'a are likewise mentioned, along with the devaputra'a, in 
the Maitreya-samiti texts analj'zed by Leumann, pp. 20-1-6, 273. * • 


devaputea 


311 


sqq.) do not seem to refer to Kani^ka as deva^utra, a title rarely absent from 
the inscriptions mentioning the king. Instead they use a term which in the 
.Chinese versions appears as Ghen-i’an and which L6vi originally i understood 
as = Oina-stJiana, ‘China’, and so implying the Chinese imperial title, ‘Son of 
.^eaven’: for this reason Ii6vi, in his translations, substitutes the word deva- 
putra. The Chinese expression had previously been reproduced by Beal 
{Indian Antiquary, XV, p. 366, and Buddhist Records, I, p. 66 n.) as Ohandan, 
and by him had been explained as meaning ‘of Gandhara’, ‘Gandharian’. 
Subsequently L6vi, in view of a note by 6arat Chandra Das {J.A.8.B., LV 
(1896), p. 193), which adduced Oandana as a name of Khotan, inclined to the 
view that Oandana was a Tibetan reproduction of Ghen-t’an = Gina-sthana, 
but that in connection with Elaniska ‘China’ really meant Chinese Turkestan 
or Kliotan: this did not, however, affect his view that the intended meaning 
was ‘ long of Cliiua ’ = ‘ Son of heaven ’ = devaputra. In an important posthu- 
mous article {Joum. Asiatique, coxxviii (1936), pp. 61-121), which I am 
discussing elsewhere, L6vi renounces (p. 80) this view, and clearly demonstrates 
by interesting evidence that Ghen (or 01ian)-Van represents a title in wide use 
among the Yueh-chih as a designation of the younger brother of a king : * 
the title in its Sanslcrit form was Oandana, 

It is unfortunate that the Buddhist texts containing the title then (or 
chan)-Van are known only in Chinese versions and not in the original Sanskrit. 
The one partial exception, th& ‘ Svirdlamhara of Afivaghosa’, as represented by 
the fragments of the ‘ Kalpand-manditika' of Kumaxaiata’,®^ does not include 
the passages in question. But Ldvi’s citations in the Journal Asiatique, 
coxxviii (1936), pp. 77-81, leave no doubt that the Sanskrit form was in fact 
Garidana’, and it certainly seems as if the term was used by the Buddhist texts 
where we should not have been surprised to find devaputra instead. 

In adducing and discussing (pp. 76—9) the occurrences, rare in Brahmanical 
sources, comparatively frequent in early Buddhist texts (Pali NiJcayas, etc.), 
of Oandana as a personal name, L6vi notes as a ‘ curious and perhaps significant ’ 
fact that oven in the very ancient texts the most prominent is a devaputra 
Candana : after what has been said above we should suspect his identity with 
the Candana who in the Dlgha-nikdya (text, Vol. II, p. 258) is named among 
• the entourage of the ‘Pour Great Kings’ and who in another passage (Vol. HI, 
p. 204) appears in connection with Takkha’s, Ma1ia-yakkha% SdnSpati’a, 
Maha-sendpati’s, etc. What significance attaches to this fact L4vi has not, 
in the unfinished article, expounded. But we, on our part, may feel confident 
that the Buddliist authors of the texts concerning ‘Candana Kaniska’ knew 


1 See his nrticio Deiix Peuples M6connus (1S96), pp. 239-240 of the reprint in. Mimorial 
Sylvain L6vi (1937). 

s Por the particulars connected with Gandhara, Waklian and Further India, see pp. 81-4 
of Ldvi’s article and as regards ‘Wafchon the original documents published by Chavannes in 
T’oung~pao, H, v (1904), pp. 61 & n., 64, 56, 82. 

s On this see Lttders’ edition of the fragments discovered by him and his discussion, pp. 17 
sqq., and L6vi, J. As., ccad (1927), pp. 96 sqq., cosxviii (1936), p. 80, n. 1. 


312 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


the demputra CaBdana from their canonical writings and knew a Candana' 
y:fl,Tn’aka from mundane information: in using the title Caridana, when ii 
Aff TWR to them in connection with Kaniska, they can hardly have failed to 
think also of demputra. To the less literary people, the composers and readers 
of dedicatory inscriptions, the devaputra Candana may have been unknown 
for them the class-name, d&oapvira, would be a more intelligible substitute. 
This interpretation implies, of course, that in some circles an etymologizing 
association of Candana Kaniska and Candana devaputra had in fact taken 
place. In view of the etymological passion of Indian and Central-Asian 
people, who have rarely spared the foreign names brought to their notice, this 
may be thought to have been inevitable: and such inevitability is apparent 
from another handling of the same foreign name, when ASvaghosa {Malidraja- 
Kanikarhklia, v. 83, and the note in Ind. Ant., xxxii, p. 349) brings it punningly 
into connection with candra, ‘moon’, and perhaps also with carida, ‘violent’. 

From this point of view it would seem that lAvi’s original conception of 
devaputra and chen (or chan)-t’an as virtually equivalent was correct, if we 
omit the reference to Clna-sthdna (China or Chinese Turkestan), which has 
been withdrawn. But we might stiU inquire whether in the application of the 
term devaputra to Kaniska some particular devapvira or Icind of devaputra 
was popularly envisaged. The sun and moon, both of which in the Abhidharma- 
koda belong to the class and which in the JmnolkadMrapi also are, as we have 
seen, so designated, could have been in people’s minds, and a reference to either 
of these could be harmonized with the above-cited passage from ASvaghosa’s 
Mdhardja-Kanika-lekha. Or it might be Kuvera Vaifravam, as suggested 
by Afivaghosa’s reference to Kanilm as ‘ruler of the northern region’ and by the 
later inclusion of the Yueh-chih, as ruling the north-west, in the system of the 
four ‘Sons of heaven’. But it may have been merely general; and at present 
we do not seem to find ground for making a choice. 

rv. Kaniska as Devaputra 

One point, however, stands out clearly, and it is of great chronological 
moment. In case the development was on the lines here sketched, it seems 
certain that the designation devaputra was not applied to any Kusa^a king 
prior to Candana E^niska: and it would follow that the maharaja rajaUraja 
devaputra Khusava of the Taxila Silver Scroll inscription ^ was Kaniska. 
Hitherto this possibility has been ignored, mainly, no doubt, because in this, 
as in the Panjtar inscription of year, 122, the Kusana king’s name is not given. 
Any other reason would be hard to find, whether in the circumstances of the 
discovery of the scroll or in its contents. The scroll comes from a part of the 
Taxila terrain occupied during a long period, where have been found coins of 
Kaniska and his successors. It was discovered, as we learn from Sir John 


1 Edited by Sir John MarshaU, 1914, pp. 973-7, and Professor Konow, 

ICAorosAjA? Inscriptions, pp. 70-7. 



DEVAPUTBA 


313 


Marshall’s descriptions {A.S.I. Report, 1912-3, pp. 18-9; J.R.A.8., 1914, pp. 973- 
6; Guide to Ta'xila, pp. 61-3), in a chapel subsidiary to the Dharmarajika 
stupa, built in a style dating from about the middle of the first century A.D. : 
it had been deposited at the’ slight depth of about one foot below the floor. 
► It seems likely that the ‘Bodhisatva-house’ named in the inscription as the 
place of deposit was that same chapel. In the contents of the inscription we 
could hardly expect to find anything discriminative as between TCauTslra. and 
an immediate predecessor, more especially as, if Kanis ka is meant, the date of 
the inscription jvould probably be in, or near, his first year. In the phrase 
mdharajasa rajatirajasa devaputrasa Khusanasa the absence of the long’s 
personal name, which seems to link the inscription with the maharayasa 
Ousanasa of the Panjtar inscription, is more than compensated by the addition 
of devaputrasa, which is not included even in the most flamboyant of the coin 
legends of Wima Kadphises, where he appears as mdharajasa rajadirajasa 
sarvaloga-iivarasa rmhiivarasa. The devaputrasa of the Scroll inscription is 
the first known instance of the application to the Ku^nas of the designation 
devaputra, which regularly, though not invariably, recurs with Kaniska and his 
successors; the retention of the old era in the first, or nearly the first, year of 
a new reign is natural. The narrowing effect of the prepossession of scholars 
in regard to the person may be seen in statements concerning the monogram 
at the end of the scroll: thus we are informed that ‘the monogram is 
characteristic of coins of Vima-Kadphises, but it is also found on coins of his 
predecessor’, it ‘is known from the coins of Kujula Kara Kadphises, Wima 
Kadphises and Zeionises’. Who would have suspected that its most 
numerous, exclusive and almost unfailing occurrences are on the coins of 
Kaniska ? Should it be established that the devaputra of the inscription is 
Kaniska, then in the year 136 = c. 78 A.D., Kaniska was already reigning in 
India; and this would end all controversy concerning his era. 

V. Indian dooteinb conoebntng Devaptjtea and the 
‘Fotjb Sons op Heaven’ 

So far we have been concerned with the original application of the term 
devaputra to the Ku§ana rulers and the manner in which it may have come 
about. As to how the term was understood by Indians, at any rate by 
Buddhist Indians, of later Kusana times, there cannot be any doubt. For 
L6vi drew attention (J. As., ccxiv (1934), pp. 1 sqq.) to Chapter XII {Devendra- 
samaya-parivarta) in the Suvarnaprabhasottama-sutra, which he shows to 
belong to that period, where the question is actually asked why Idngs are called 
devaputra. 

katharn manusyasambMio raja devas tu procyaie | 
hena ca lietuna raja devapuiras tu procyate II 

‘how is a king born as a man styled god’ {deva) 1 
and for what reason is a long styled devaputra % ’ 



314 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


The answer is that before being bom as a man he was abiding among the 
gods {deva) and that, because the Thirty-tluee gods (each) contributed to his 
substance,! therefore he is ‘god-son’ — 

O/pi vai devasambJiiUo devapiUraJi sa ucyaie fl 
trayastri^air devardjendraix bJiago datto nrpasya hi | 
putratvam (sic) sarvadevandm nirmito manujeharah || 

The author explains the appellation on purely Indian lines and does not 
even conceive the possibility of its being a translation of a foreign title. The 
explanation, given at a time when the term had been, no dotJbt, many years 
in use, cannot, indeed, be decisive in regard to its origin; but, occurring in a 
text wliich frequently mentions the celestial devaputra’s, it is distinctly adverse 
to a separation of the two cases. That the Kusanas are envisaged is obvious, 
since no other Indian longs are known to have been styled devaputra. It is 
noticeable that, as L6vi has pointed out (p. 11 n.), in the Chinese translations 
(the Sanslorit originals being lost) Nagarjuna’s commentary on the Prajna- 
pdramitd mentions the * state-king’ called ‘Son of heaven’ (no doubt devaputra) 
as an example of a ‘god [not “god-son”] by name ’,2 and the Ahhidliarma- 
maha-vibJidsd groups, as ‘one-region-kings’, the ILusana and Mumpda Icings 
with the Chinese ‘son of heaven’: both texts belong to the Kusana period. 
Apparently, therefore, Nagarjuna did not understand devaputra literally, and 
the Maha-vibhdsa did not accord to the Husapas and Murundas the title 
‘son of heaven’ in its Chinese meaning. 

Evidently the S^ivarnaprabhdsoitama-sutra knows nothing of the doctrine 
of the ‘four sons of heaven’ which otherwise could hardly have escaped mention 
in the chapter (VI) entitled Gahirmdhdrdjaparivarta. But a passage rendered 
by Sylvain L4vi (J. As., IX, ix (1897), p. 23, n. 2), as from a Buddhist sutra 
translated into Chinese in 392 A.D., introduces the four in the following 
terms : — 

‘In Jambu-dvipa there are 16 great Icingdoms with 84,000 walled 
. cities; there are 8 kings and 4 “sons of heaven”. In the east there is 
the “Son of heaven” of the Tsin (= China imder the Tsin dynasty, 
265-420 A.D.): there the population prospers. -In the south there is 
the “Son of heaven” of India: there the land has many celebrated 
elephants. In the west there is the “Son of heaven” of Ta-ts’in (the 
Roman empire): there the earth abounds in gold, silver, jewels, jade. 
In the north-west there is the “Son of heaven” of the Yiieh-chih : there 
the earth has many excellent horses.’ 

The text goes on to give some particulars concerning the 84,000 cities 
and, further, concerning the ‘2,600 sea-kingdoms’ and the 6 Icings, ruling 
each over 500 kingdoms. In the same connection L6vi refers to a well-known 


* The doctrine, as L6vi notes, of Menu VH, 3 sqq. It is not necessary here to discuss 
details of reading and translation, in regard to which reference may bo made to L6vi’a article 
and the notes in the edition by Professor Nobel, pp. 133-5. 

" As. distinguished from ‘.god by birth’, ‘god by pvirity’, and ‘god by inborn purity’. 



DEVAPUTEA 


315 


passage where Hsiian-tsang (Beal, BtiddMst Records of the Western World, I, 
pp. 13-7) discourses concerning the four rulers who, when there is no paramount 
cakravartin Icing, jointly govern Jambu-dvipa; in the south the 'lord of 
elephants {gajupati)’, inthe west the ‘lord of treasures’ {ratnapati or dhanopoti)', 
in the north the ‘lord of horses’ {aivapati); in the east the ‘lord of men’ 
(narapati), Hsiian-tsang does not expressly identify the foiu* Icingdoms; but 
from the particulars winch he proceeds to add it is evident that he has in 
mind India (south), the Sasanian empire (west), the Hsiung-nu, Turlcs, etc,, of 
Central Asia (north), and China (east) : the inference is confirmed beyond all 
doubt by a statement of a literary collaborator of Hsuan-tsang, who names 
India (south), Persia (west), the Hsiung-nu = Turks (north), and China (cast) 
(Pelliot in T’oung-pao, 1923, pp. 108-110, 125). 

In 1918 (J. As,, XI, xi, pp. 82-3, 159-160) Levi mentions that the passage 
in question, with' a further passage (concerning certain States in India), is not 
found in the suira text as extant, but is given in a compilation of 516 A.D. 
as an extract from the sutra. Professor Pelliot, in an article (‘La tli4orio dos 
quatre Fils de Ciel’, T'oung-pao, 1923, pp. 97-125) devoted to this subject, 
suggests (p. 105) that the citation may bo firom a different, earlier (266 or 
281 A.D., p. 101) Chinese translation of the sutra, IcnouTi to have existed, 
remarlcing that in any case the composition of the translation is singularly 
incoherent and confirms the suggestion of a Chinese catalogue of 594 A.D. to 
the effect that it consisted of extracts from a larger work. The passage, which 
in the Chinese version has. Professor Pelliot assures us (p. 105), transcription 
of an archaic type, certainly, by reason of the stock numbers, such as 84,000, 
and other features, represents an Indian original. 

In the theory tlxree distinct elements can be recognized, namely: (1) the 
doctrine of four great States situated at the four cardinal points of the compass ; 
(2) the distinctive characteristics of the four great States; (3) the identifica- 
tion of the States with existing great powers. As regards No. 2, Professor 
•Pelliot has shoum (pp. 111-6) that the notion of a division of India (not the 
world), after the time of tho great legendary sovereigns, between three 
successions of kings, ‘lords of horses’ {aivapati), lords of elephants {gajapali), 
‘lords of men’ {Tuirapati), or four, when we add the lords of parasols (chatlra- 
pati), is a lato popular notion, not found in the literature. Every Tndianist 
will subscribe to this view. But Pelliot proceeds (pp. 116-9) to show that 
some such notion, with Iran as tho land of wealth, India of elephants, China 
. of men, and the Turks of ‘fierce beasts’ (instead of'hor.ses ’), was comnninicated 
in the ninth century A.D. by a Chinese emperor to an Arab tra^clIcr.l At a 
date much more remote, namely c. 245-250 A.D., a Chinese ambassador to 
Fu-nan, a State in Lido-China partly corresponding to tho later Cambodia, 
reported that in the foreign countries there was a saj'ing that under heaven 
there were three abundances, abundance of men in China, abundance of gems 


1 Pelliot refers to the translation of the ‘Voyage of tho Arabic Merchant Sula>innn\ by 
M. Fermnd, ^vho has further n-ritten in BSOS., pp. 329-33S. on this subject. 


316 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


in Ta-ts’in (the Greco-Boman east), abundance of horses among the Yueh-chih 
(pp. 121-3). Pelliot plausibly suggests that the saying, obviously not of 
Chinese origin and partly corresponding, though without mention of the 
points, to the extract from the Buddhist svira, arose in India, which, 
as the point of observation, would naturally omit to name itself as the fourth. 

From an Indianist point of view this suggestion invites consideration both 
in respect of the substance of the saying and in respect of its terms. The 
general criticism that no such saying is loiown in Indian literature may be 
put aside on the ground that it was a popular dictum, evoked by the active 
commercial intercourse of the early centuries A.D., which in later India lapsed 
into oblivion, and that it did indeed find its way into a Buddhist sutra. But it is 
not easy to see how Indians should have coine to regard the Greco-Boman 
west as the land of gems instead of as a land which had much wealth for 
purchase of Indian gems : i it is still harder to ascribe to populous India the 
notion of Chma, of wliich the Indians knew very little, as abounding in men; 
that the Yueh-chih country was a land specially of horses, which is not Imown 
to be a fact and is not indicated by the Kusana coinage, may indeed have been 
inferred from incidents such as that of the four Yiieh-chih horses brought 
to Fu-nan, as reported by the above-mentioned Chinese ambassador, by 
an envoy of an Indian long. Possibly the repute of the Yiieh-chih in regard 
to horses may have accrued to them as representatives of northern Asia, which 
with good reason, considering the horsed Hsiung-nu and later nomads, may 
have been very widely famed in that respect: the Yfieh-chih horses may, 
in fact, have been transmitted from Farghana, with its choice breed which 
at the beghming of the first century B.C. provoked a Chinese conquest of the 
country. We do not therefore find in the substance of the saying anjdihing 
pointing to India in particular as the source : and, if we proceed to include 
India as the ‘land of elephants’, we have a notion quite natural in outsiders, 
such as the Greeks and the Baktrian informants of Chang Ch’ien,® but not 
found in India itself. On these grounds it seems preferable to attribute the 
sayiug to the ‘foreign Idngdoms’ whence it was reported and to understand 
primarily the countries of Indo-China and Malaisia, where the active trade 
communications, iUuminated by the researches of Sylvain Ldvi and Professor 
PeUiot, may have given birth to it. In those countries China may indeed 
have been conceived as a land of vast population, and the omission of the old 
familiar neighbour, India, may have been almost as natural in the States of 
Indianized culture as in India itself. 

The terminology also is provoking : what Indian terms are represented by 
‘China’, Ta-ts’in, ‘Yiieh-chih’ 1 Are we to understand Gina (no doubt, quite 
justifiable), Yavana (or Eomaka) and Tukhdra'i The last-named is, in fact, 
known to have been rendered into Chinese by Yiieh-chih,^ and Yavana (or 

1 Perhaps the notion really came from China, where it appears as early as in the Laier Han 
Annals: see Chavannes’ translation in T’oung-pao, 1907, pp. 181-4. 

* See Hirth, op. dt., p. 98; De Groot, op. eit., II, p. 20. 

® L6vi, Joum. As., IX, is (1897), p. 10, n. 1. 



devakitra 


317 


Romaka) is possible enough. The application of cUvapati, ‘lord of horses and 
gajapati, ‘lord of elephants’, primarily designations of functionaries, to rulers 
,of States strong in cavalry and elephant squads is in itself quite reasonable 
and can, in fact, be instanced.^ But that the Indians should have originated 
the use of the word narapati, ‘lord of men’, so common, as Pelliot has remarked 
(p. 116 ), in the general sense of ‘lung’, as the appellation of the ruler of a 
particular State notable for its ‘men’, is not less improbable linguistically than 
is conceptually an Indian recognition of China as being such a State. We can 
tliink of only one way in which such a use can have arisen, namely if narapati 
in this sense was a translation of a foreign term, so that both the idea and the 
expression came from outside. As for devaputra, which, since the Yiieh-chih 
come into the question, must in the passage be the Indian term represented 
by the Chinese ‘Son of heaven’, the notion of a demputra of India {Bhdrafa- 
varsa ? Arydvarta ?), as distinct from the yiieh-chih, is so unheard of that we 
may doubt whether it was ever put into Indian words, except in the svira 
passage itself and in connection with the four-empire theory. 

As regards the location of the four States at the four cardinal points, it 
seems not insignificant that, while absent from the report of the Chinese 
envoy, it occurred, if it did certainly occur, in the approximately contemporary 
Buddhist suira. Does it not seem as if the original saying, with its popular 
recognition of the three (or four) great States, had come to the knowledge of 
the much-travelled Buddhist pilgrims and propagandists and had by them 
been fitted into a pre-established framework? The long prior existence of 
such a framework is, as we have seen, a fact: the system of the four ‘regents 
of the quarters ’ existed in the earliest period of Buddhism and was a permanent 
part of its cosmography and theology. And what was the common designation 
of the four regents ? The ‘four great kings’ {calur-malidrdja). And what was 
the regular expression for their divine status? They were ‘sons of gods’ or 
‘of the god class’ {devaputra). Thus the Buddhists, before contact with the 
saying concerning the three (or four) great existent States, were aware that 
each of the four cardinal points was ruled by a divine ‘great king {maJidrdja) 
who was a devaputra, the appellation which quite certainly stood in the Indian 
sutra, if authentic, where the Chinese version has ‘son of heaven {t ien'tzv,), 
the Chinese imperial title. It seems impossible to suppose that this corre- 
spondence can have been absent from the consciousness of the author of the 
sutra. 

But there was also a further special link. One of the great States 
mentioned in the sajdng, namely that of the Yueh-chih, was actually under a 
ruler respectfully known as devaputra, and was associated with one of the 
cardinal points, namely the north. Here we seem to find the germ of the 
whole later theory of the four ‘sons of heaven’. It does not seem accidental 
that, in addition to the inclusion of the Yiieh-chih in the earliest known record 
of the theory, namely that extracted from the Buddhist sutra, another Chinese 


1 Pelliot mentions (p. 114) the gajapati kings of Orissa. 



318 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


work of the third century A.D. (see Pelliot, p. 123 n.) states concerning the 
Yiieh-chih independently that their long has the title ‘son of heaven’. Thus 
we are led to the conclusion that the theory of the ‘four sons of heaven’ resulted 
from conflation of an ancient doctrinal framework with a popular saying 
concerning three (or four) great States which in fact, by reason of their geo- 
graphical situation, readily adapted themselves to it, but that the link was 
supplied by the circumstance that one of the States had separately acquired 
for its head the designation ‘son of heaven’. The fact that in the svira the 
Yueh-chih are placed not, as by A4vaghosa, in the north, but in the north-west, 
which from the Indian point of view is more exact, seems to be a concession to' 
actuahty, indicating that the conflation, or the composition of the Buddhist 
sfiira, took place in India, not in some other region of the Buddhist world. 

The superior validity of the framework is seen in its persistence through 
the changes in the later selections of the representative States, selections 
adapted to the times. In the time of Hsiian-tsang, as we have seen, the 
Yiieh-chih had been replaced by the Turks, and the Greco-Eoman world by 
Persia (the Sasanians). In the ninth century A.D. the Khalifate had pushed 
itself into the place of the Sasanians, regarded as the central power, while iu 
another contemporary account it made itself a fifth, greatest of all (Pelliot, 
pp. 116-120). A more or less contemporary Tibetan version (Thomas, Tib. 
Literary Texts and Documents, I, p. 276) had the Turks in the north and the 
Tajiks (Perso-Arab world) in the west. 

The characteristics of the different States lilcewise undergo modification. 
In the Tibetan version the west is no longer the land of gems, but, more 
sensibly, of wealth; and this seems to be accepted by the two Arab accoimts 
in respect of their country. China was evidently not content to rank simply 
as the ‘land of men’ and added a gloss, claiming the excellence of a peaceful, 
orderly State: the Tibetan version terms it the land of ‘ wisdom ’.i To the 
Tibetans, with their own great armies of mounted men, the north could not 
be distinctively the ‘land of horses’, and so the Turk coimtry became the land 
of ‘arms’: to the Arabs it is the land of ‘fierce beasts’. Pinally, India, the 
‘land of elephants’, is in the Arabic-Chinese account also the land of ‘wisdom’, 
whereas to the Tibetans it has become simply the land of ‘religion’. 

It appears, therefore, that about the middle of the third century A.D. 
it became for the first time known in China, from an ' Indo-Chinese source, 
that the Yiieh-chih rulers had an appellation which, as rendered into Chinese, 
was verbally identical with the ancient Chinese imperial title ‘son of heaven’. 
The fact that the Chinese in all their Central- Asian intercourse with the Yiieh- 
chih had not previously heard of the appellation sufiSces in itself to prove that 
it was not one adopted by the Yiieh-chih in actual competition with the 
Chinese empire: it would, no doubt, be beside the mark to point out that 
the Chinese title has a meaning quite different from anything normally 
expressed by the Indian devaputra, ‘son of a god’ or ‘son of the gods’; but, 

^ Evea in the Later Han Annals of the Chinese (see Chavannes in T’oung-pao, 1907, p. 218) 
this notion is espressed. 


devaptttba 


319 


as has been stated supra, there is no evidence to show that the term devaputra 
was ever, at any rate at an early period, adopted by the Yiieh-chih rulers as 
.a title. The earliest available indication of its being even understood in the 
Indian and Greater-Ihdian world as a title seems in fact to be the report of 

• the Chinese envoy, about the middle of the third century A.D., to Ihdo- 
Cliina and the, perhaps approximately contemporary, version of an Indian 
Buddhist sHtra. 

In India itself the term devapuira has never, except in reference to the 
Yueh-cliih, been used as an appellation of royalty: tliis may have been due 

* in part to reaction from its application to foreign rulers ; but far more probably 
it was simply because to Indians the devaputra's, as a particular class of divine 
beings, were the familiar connotation of the term and because, as an honorific 
appellation of kings, the term had long been forestalled by deva. Indo-China 
also, where the introduction of Indian culture probably antedated the Kusapa 
empire, had no devapuira. The Ceylon inscriptions and histories {Mahd- 
vamsa and Gula-vanisa) likewise ignore the term. As regards Chinese 
Turkestan, we have seen that the Kharosthi documents of c. 200-300 A.D. 
apply the term, chiefly in datings, to the Shan-shan Icings: in c. the eighth 
century its equivalent (jezdatn-pura) in Professor Konow’s ‘new Saka dialect’ 
from Maralbashi (Berlin Academy SUzungsberichte, 1936, pp. 772 sqq., see 
p. 818) occurs once, in a dating. Presumably there is here an imitation of 
Kusapa India. From the other States, except Khotan, the evidence is too 
exiguous to justify any positive statement; but the fact that from the Khotan 
records the application of the term to royalties is totally absent suggests that 
in Kuca also and other kingdoms the same may have been the case; if so, 
one reason may have been, as in India, familiarity with the expression ‘god-son’ 
as denoting a particular class of divine beings: and this is supported by the 
above-noted occurrence of the term, in a Saka-Khotam rendering, with that 
signification. 

The application of the term ‘god-son’ to kinglets in ^han-shan and else- 
where in Chinese Turkestan may be regarded as in itself a proof that the 
term did not imply any competition with the great Chinese ‘son of heaven’: 
the signification in the two cases was entirely different, the devaputra’s being ' 
a class, numerous, whereas the ‘son of heaven ’ was essentially unique.^ There 
is, however, one instance of late date, where such competition may be described 
as likely. In the eighth centmy A.D. the Tibetan rendering Llia-sras is' 
applied to the famous Btsan-po Klhri-Gtsug-ldehu-brtsan, whose queen was 
Cliinese: in editing the documents 1927, p. 839; 1928, pp. 73, 74, 

87, 90) I regret to have overlooked the real significance and to have given as 
translation merely ‘prince’; there is no doubt that the Btsan-po himself is 
meant, and the expression occurs similarly in Tibetan elsewhere.^ At the time 

1 So L6vi in J . As., cojodv (1034), p. 18. The SuvarpaprabliSsoitama-sutra has a chapter (XV) 
entitled * The prophecy of the Ten Thousand Dempufra's '. 

2 It is used os rendering of devaputra in the Tibetan version of the Suvanyiprahhasottama- 
sUtra: see the extract printed by L6vi in Journal Asiatique, ccxxiv (1934), p. 7. 


320 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


the Tibetan power had in about a century of almost continuous war shown 
itself fully a match for that of China : the two ruling dynasties had an intimate 
mutual acquaintance, having been more than once associated by marriage. ' 
Hence a competitive claim on the part of Tibet is quite intelligible. But 
even here a doubt is not precluded. The Tibetan Buddhists were familiar- 
with the term * god-son’ in their texts and in the Buddhist usage of Chinese 
Turkestan; and in their translations they had used the identical expression, 
Lha-sras, so that they may have meant ‘god-son’ and not ‘son of heaven’: 
moreover, the doctrine of the divine descent of the Btsan-po’s was not only 
ancient in Tibet, but was also, proclaimed formally on official occasions, as 
may be seen exemplified in the famous treaty inscriptions of Lha-sa {J.B.A.S., 
1909, pp. 923 sqq., esp. p. 949, 11. 17-20) and in the text edited in J.B.A.S., 
1928, pp. 77-8, where the phrasing is, so to speak, stereotyped. Probably the 
doctrine is 0 I 4 indeed, being involved in the ancient Bon-po cosmology, with 
its two heavens and descents therefrom. It is therefore in its essence rather 
akin to the Cliinese doctrine than dependent upon it; but this does not preclude 
a rivalry of phrase with the Chinese or, on the other hand, an appropriation 
of something current in some State of Chinese Turkestan. 


SIR WILLIAM WATSON 
By 

De. Amaranatha Jha, M.A., Hon.D.Litt., F.R.S.L., Vice-Chancellor, 

Allahabad University 

The Victorians — ^poets and politicians and prophets — are, for all their 
solemnity and solidity the subject now of ridicule or at best of gentle superior 
criticism. They are so distant from the stern realities of today, it is said: 
they lived in such an attractive imaginary earthly’ paradise; they so ignored 
harsh truths and preferred to pin their faitli to God in TTis heaven; their com- 
fortable belief in the federation of the world has been proved to be so false; 
their major problems. Free Trade and Protection, the education of women, the 
Tractarian movement, the Bulgarian atrocities, the War in Crimea, seem in 
the retrospect so petty; they were, in short, so Victorian that it seems, except 
for historical reasons, hardly worth while attending to them. But it is no use 
forgetting that today is the heir of yesterday, and, whether we like it or not, 
we are descended from the Victorians. Is it, Ijpwever, quite clear that they . 
have no intrinsic worth % Are they not worth a study for their own sake ? 
Is there not in them largeness of utterance, nobleness of vision, healthiness of 
outlook, energy, power, grace and the other qualities that ensure permanence ? 
The robust humour of Dickens; the tragic intensity of Thomas Hardy; the 
moving eloquence of Newman; the clear, keen insight of Matthew Arnold; the 
encyclopaedic range of Tennyson’s interests; the ‘ psychological studies of 



Sni WILLIAM WATSON 


321 


Browning; Swinburne’s impassioned and elemental energy; William Morris’ 
dreams of tomorrow’s uprising to deeds that shall be sweet; the tender lyrics 
of Christina Bossetti; the perfection of the prose style in Walter Pater; Yeats, 
whose melody never failed him — ^is one to ignore all this merely because it is 
yictorian? ‘Q’, a sure -judge of literary excellence, a man of letters more 
than a more professor, says: 

‘After many months spent in close study of Victorian verse, I rise 
from the task in reverence and wonder not only at the mass of poetry 
written with ardour in these less-than-a-hundred years, but at the 
amount of it which is excellent, and the height of some of that excellence ; 
in some exultation'toO, as I step aside and — drawing difficult breath — 
gaze after the stream of young runners with their torches.’ 

I maintain that at no period of English literary history has so much been pro- 
duced and so much of real excellence. They had defects, too, ‘thick’, in the 
words of Tennyson, ‘as dust in vacant chamber’; but under the dust, under 
the dead weight of contemporary rust, there is pure gold. 

It is of a late Victorian that I write in this paper. I have not cared to 
obtain Imowledge of his life. I have contented myself with a study only of 
his published work. Sir William Watson is a writer whose work can be 
appraised without any reference to the circumstances of his career. I do 
^ not Ijnow if he was bom in a well-to-do family; if he went to a University; 
what job he had; what, in legal phraseology, his ostensible means of living 
were; whore ho lived; whether he was. married and had children. Nor is 
anj’’ of this information necessary in order to enjoy and criticize bis literary 
work. 

Watson’s first volume ‘The Prince’s Quest’, was written in 1880 and his 
active literary career continued for half a century. His intense patriotism, 
his transparent sincerity, his manly outspokenness, his sense of the high 
dignity of the poetic muse, are characteristics that one can notice in aU the 
stages of his career. One notices, too, the marvellous felicity of phrase — a little 
too polished, too faultless for l3TUC passion and energy, indicating rather 
thought, deliberation, criticism than abandon, liveliness and vivacity. There 
is eloquence and grace, and a uniformly high standard of finish. There is no 
trace anywhere of slovenliness or haste. The poet seems to have thought 
carefully over every phrase and every line and given to it a polish and a grace 
that may appear a little cold, a little too perfect, but that is a testimony to 
his sidll as a verbal artist. Scattered all over his work are jewelled phrases, 
^ verbal gems such as: 

‘The mystery we make darker with a name.’ 

‘And little masters make a toy of song.’ 

‘Keats, on his lips the eternal rose of youth.’ 

‘The earth was aU in tune, and you a note 
Of Nature’s happy chorus.’ 

‘I have seen the mom one laugh of gold.’ 


21 


322 


B. 0. LAW VOLtFME 


‘0 lives, that nameless come and noteless go.* 

‘Who tilled not earth, save with the harrow of war.’ 

But Wilde he is obviously in love with words, he is no lover of many words. 
As he says iu the ‘Preface’ to ‘Poems, Brief and New’, he has studied 
brevity. He succeeds in packing many thoughts into a line and a whole^ 
landscape in a few phrases. His opinion on the subject is expressed in the 
lines: 

‘Since Life is rough, 

Sing smoothly, O Bard.’ 

Many of Watson’s poems are distinctly literary, owing their inspiration 
to literature and men of letters, reminiscent of great passages, and yet 
characterized both by originality of expression and freshness of approach. In 
‘Wordsworth’s Grave’, written in the eighties, we have for the first time an 
endeavour to combine elegiac emotion with penetrative criticism. In one 
stanza he distinguishes Wordsworth from other masters: 

‘Not Milton’s keen, translunar music thine; 

Not Shakespeare’s cloudless boundless human view; 

Not Shelley’s flush of rose on peaks divine; 

Nor yet the wizard twilight Coleridge knew.’ 

He goes into the heart of Wordsworth’s poetry when he says ; 

‘ Thou hadst for weary feet, the gift of rest.* 

In the same volume he refers to * the frugal note of Gray ’, surely a more 
fit phrase than Matthew Arnold’s — * He never spoke out ’ . And how exquisitely 
he describes Burns : 

‘On life’s broad plain the ploughman’s conquering share 
Uptiuned the fallow lands of truth anew.’ 

This is how he sums up the main features of the poetry of the eighteenth 
century: 

‘Thenceforth she but festooned the porch of things’ 

— external decoration, touching but the outer surface of life, not plumbing the 
deeps, playing but on the porch, never venturing to enter the heart. 

On Shelley’s Centenary in 1892, he described ‘the ineffectual angel’ as 
‘A singer, who, if errors blurred 

His sight, had yet a spirit stirred 
By vast desire. 

And ardour fledging the swift word ' 

With plumes of fire.’ 

On the death of Tennyson he wrote ‘Lachrymss Musarum’, the poem 
by which perhaps Watson is best known. Obviously he took as his model 
Tennyson’s Wellington Ode, but the poem is imquestionably a noble and 
sincere tribute from a young poet to the most picturesque and melodious singer 
who had dominated literature and stirred the popular imagination for over 

2IB 


SIR WILLIAM WATSON 


323 


half a century. He laments that the life that seemed a perfect song is o’er; 
he mourns for the singer of undying songs is dead. 

‘For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame. 

And soon the winter silence shall he ours. 

^ Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame 
Crowns with no mortal flowers.’ 

Here are two passages cuUed from difierent poems on Shelley: 

‘Who pre-eminently of men 
Seemed nourished upon starbeams and the stuff 
Of rainbows and the tempest, and the foam.’ 

‘The hectic flamelike rose of verse. 

All colour and all odour and all bloom. 

Steeped in the moonlight, glutted with the sun.’ 

Here is a sentence on Keats: 

‘ Great 

With somewhat of a glorious sunlessness.’ 

In the poem entitled ‘In Laleham Churchyard’, where Matthew Arnold is 
buried, there is insufficient appreciation of his poetic achievement and 
inadequate criticism; but the following lines are a fair summing up of his 
main gifts : 

‘And nigh to where his bones abide. 

The Thames with its unruffled tide 
Seems like his genius typified, — 

Its strength, its ^ace. 

Its lucid gleam, its sober pride. 

Its tranquil peace.’ 

Landor’s ‘Hellenics’ he describes as 
‘The bland Attic skies 
True-mirrored by an English well.’ 

On Burns: 

‘A Shakespeare, flashing o’er the whole 
Of man’s domain 

The splendour of his cloudless soul 
And perfect brain.’ 

And again: 

‘He came when poets had forgot 
How rich and strange the human lot. 

How warm the tints of Life ; how hot 
Are Love and Hate; 
what makes Truth divine, and what 
Makes manhood great 



324 


B. 0. LAW volume- 


A dreamer of tlie common dreams, 

A fisher in familiar streams, 

He chased the transitory gleams 
That all pursue; 

But on his lips the eternal themes 
Again were new.’ 

There appeared in the 1893 edition of * Laclirymse Mnsarum’ a bitter poem on 
Oscar WMe, which Watson omitted from his ‘Collected Poems’. Here are 
four lines on him: 

‘ And as for us~to our disgrace ; 

Your stricture’s truth must be conceded; 

Would any but a stupid race 

Have made the fuss about you we did ? ’ 

Another ungenerous poem appeared in the 1890 edition of ‘Wordsworth’s 
Grave ’ — an uncharitable attack on Ruskin : 

‘Yes, you have carried, we are well aware. 

Up to its highest point of cultivation. 

The art of talking nonsense with an air 
Of inspiration.’ 

The epigram has not had a prosperous career in England, particularly in 
verse. But Sir William Watson has written niany excellent, pithy epigrams 
which have much of the effectiveness of those attributed to Martial. Indeed, 
one may look upon the epigram as Watson’s most successful lyric form. There 
is a large range of themes — and invariably the style is distinctive. He tried 
to follow the view which he expresses in one of his critical essays that ‘Passion 
plus self-restraint is the moral basis of the finest style’. Of the achievement 
of the poet he says, of the discovery of poetic beauty in unexpected places, 
of the communication of loveliness to unpromising material : 

‘The Poet gathers fruit from every tree. 

Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistle he. 

Pluck’d by his hand, the barest weed that grows 
Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose.’ 

On ‘The Three Kinds of Song’ he expresses liis partiality for the kind that 
supplies nourishment both to the spirit and the mind, that satisfies the 
intellect as well as the heart, that is both thoughtful and emotional: 

- ‘Song have I known that fed the soul. 

And song that was like a foaming bowl; 

But the song that I account divine 
Is at once rare food and noble wine.’ 

There are some bitter lines on modernist verse and specially on its formlessness, 
its deliberate defiance of metrical laws, and the delight it takes in irregular 
patterns: 



SIB WHiLlAM WATSON 


326 


‘I bought one day a book of rhyme — 

One long, fierce flout at tune and time ; 

Bagged and jagged by intent. 

As if each line were earthquake-rent.’ 

1 may also draw attention to ‘A Recipe’ — or * hints on how to’ write poetry 
such as may please certain contemporary palates ’ ; 

‘Let metre eternally jump, jolt, and lurch: 

For infinite crudeness make infinite search .... 

So beware lest a line inadvertently scan. 

And of course be as odd and as queer as you can .... 

And write in a fashion that makes men of sense. 

At the mere name of Poetry, haste to fly hence.’ 

Two epigrams more — both rather bitter in tone — may be quoted. The first is 
entitled, ‘Loves and Hates’: 

‘I love the poet of cloudless ray; 

Love, too, the folded, golden vapour; 

But hate the humbug who all day 

Serves up deliberate fog on paper.’ 

The other is addressed ‘To a Successful Jtlan’ : 

‘Yes, titles, and emoluments, and place. 

All tell the world that you have won life’s race. 

But then, ’twas your good fortune not to start 
Handicapped with a conscience or a heart.’ 

A devoted disciple of Wordsworth’s, Watson learnt much from nature and 
specially celebrated the beauty of nature. There is no evidence that he learnt 
from it anytlxing of moral evil and of good, nor that he read any philosophy in 
it. He is content to see and feel and drink in its beauteous sights and sounds 
and sometimes find in them a reflection of his mood and a picture of the life 
of man. The following quatrain best illustrates his nature-poetry: 

‘Spring, the low prelude of a lordlier song: 

Summer, a music without hint of death; 

Autumn, a cadence lingeringly long: 

Winter, a pause; — ^the Minstrel — Year takes breath.’ 

Here are some pretty lines to April: 

‘April, April, 

Laugh thy girlish laughter. 

Then, the moment after. 

Weep thy girlish tearsl 
April, that mine ears 
Like a lover greetest. 

If I teU thee, sweetest. 

All my hopes and fears. 



326 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


April, April, 

■ Laugh thy golden laughter 
But, the moment after 
Weep thy golden tears 1 ’ 

In another poem he speaks of Nature ‘who never negligently yet fashioned an^ 

April violet’ and ‘who suflFers us pure form to see in a dead leaf’s anatomy’. 

The contrast between men and nature is brought out in the poem entitled 

‘The First Skylark of Spring’ — evidently inspired by Shelley: 

‘We sing of Life, with stormy breath 

That shakes the lute’s distemperedstring; 

We sing of Love, and loveless Death 

Takes up the song we sing 

But I am fettered to the sod. 

And but forget my bonds an hour: 

In amplitude of dreams a god, 

A slave in dearth of power.’ 

The same contrast is expressed in an epigram: 

‘Toiling and yearning, ’tis man’s doom to see 
No perfect creature fashion’d of his hands. 

Insulted by a flower’s immaculacy, 

And mock’d at by the flawless stars he stands.’ 

In a different key is the poem ‘The Lark and the Thrush* — ^reminiscent o: 

Wordsworth’s ‘Lesser Celandine’ and ‘The Green Linnet’ : 

* 0 from too far, and from too high. 

In too pure air above. 

Doth the great Rhapsodist of the sky 
•Utter melodious love. 

Bird that from neighbouring tree does pour 
Songs of less heavenly birth, 

’Tis thine, thine, that can pierce me more. 

Sweet Rhapsodist of the Earth.’ 

Both Shelley and Wordsworth have their share in the fashioning of the poem 
entitled ‘Rejuvenescence’ — the ‘Immortality Ode’ and ‘The West Wind’ 
must have suggested the underlying thought: 

‘The Day is yotmg, the Day is sweet. 

And light is her heart as the tread of her feet. 

The Day is weary, the Day is old: 

She has sunk into sleep through a tempest of gold. 

Sleep, tired Day I Thou shalt rise made new. 

All splendour and wonder and odour and dew.’ 

I shall quote one more specimen of Watson’s nature-poetry, a vivid and 
powerful word-picture of a storm from the poem entitled ‘In the Midst of the 
Seas’: 



SIK WILLIAM WATSON 


327 


‘Many have sung of the terrors of the Storm; 

I will make me a song of its beauty, its graces of hue and form; 

A song of the loveliness gotten of Power 
Born of Rage in her blackest hour, 

^Vhen never a wave repeats another, 

But each is unlike his own twin brother. 

Each is himself from base to crown. 

Himself alone as he clambers up. 

Himself alone as he crashes down; — 

When the whole sky drinks of the sea’s mad cup 
And the ship is thrilled to her quivering core. 

But amidst her pitching, amidst her rolling. 

Amidst the clangour and boom and roar. 

Is a Spirit of Beauty all-controlling.’ 

Watson took at one time, quite early in his career, a lively interest in 
politics. He was no supporter of Jingoism. He was a firm believer in the value 
of freedom for all races and not only for England. He passionately denounced 
all those who stood in the way of other nations attaining freedom. •N’aturally 
verso written as part of current political polemics can have but a transitory 
interest and can hardly bo of value once the ashes of controversy are 
cold. Watson did not raise any issues that are permanently engaging man’s 
attention; this portion of his work is the one least likely to last. One of hfi 
collections, published in 1897, is entitled'The Year of Shame’. He says: 
‘Never henceforth, 0 England, never more 
Prate thou of generous effort, righteous aim. 

Whose shame is that thou knowest not thy shame!’ 

In another poem, written ‘during estrangement’, he says ‘as architects of ruin 
we have no peers’, and 

‘Redder from our red hoof-prints the wild rose 
Of freedom shall afresh hereafter spring.’ 

In connection with the South African War, he says ; 

‘Ah, not today is Nature on our side! 

In mountains and the rivers are our foe. 

And Nature with the heart of man allied 
Is hard to overthrow.’ 

In ‘ Harvest ’, he says : 

‘A naked people in captivity; 

A land where Desolation hath her throne ; 

The wrath that is, the rage that is to be : 

Our fruits, whereby we are known.’ 

And in ‘The True Imperialism ’ ; 

‘Vain is your Science, vain your Art, 

Your triumphs and your glories vain. 

To feed the hunger of their heart 
And famine of their brain.’ 



328 


B. 0. liAW VOLUME 


In * Metamorpliosis ’ : 

‘Shouting her o\m applause, if haply so 
She may shout do\m the hisses of the world.’ 

But this mood did not last long. In the ‘Ode on the Coronation of Kingj 
Edward VII he says: 

‘Proudly, as fits a nation that hath now 
So many dawns and sunsets on her brow, 

This duteous heart we bring.’ 

Naturally, scattered over the pages of Watson’s several books, are many 
pieces that deal with weightier matter, have a considerable ballast of thought 
and meditation, and touch the depths of life. There is no obligation for a 
lyric poet to be a philosopher. Indeed, should he lose himself in the mazes 
of divine philosophy, however charming it might be, the less poet he! But 
the best poetry is a combination of thought and fancy and melody . If we 
read Watson with care, we shall find him frequently expressing a mood of 
discontent with things as they are, of deep dissatisfaction with the hard 
terms of human life, of despair that one must fret one’s soul ‘with crosses and 
with cares’. It is not the ‘pale contented sort of discontent’ of which Keats 
speaks in ‘ Lamia ’ . The following fines express the prevailing mood : 

‘Man only, irked by calm, and rent 
By each emotion’s throes. 

Neither in passion finds content. 

Nor finds it in repose.’ 

In another poem he states the same imcertainty about the nature of existence 
on earth : 

‘On from room to room I stray. 

Yet my Host can ne’er espy. 

And I know not to this day 

Whether guest or captive I.’ 

The concluding stanza of the poem entitled ‘The Hope of the World’ is in the 
same strain: 

‘Here, where perhaps alone 
I conquer or I fail. 

Here, o’er the dark Deep blown, 

I ask no perfumed gale; 

I ask the unpampering breath 
That fits me to endure 
Chance, and victorious Death, 

Live, and my doom obscure. 

Who Icnow not whence I am sped, nor to what port I sail.’ 

That some sorrow is inevitable and that hick consists in the number of errors 
one can avoid is the theme of the linos ‘ To a Eriond ’ : 


SIB WILLIAM WATSON 


329 


‘For they are blest that have not. much to rue — 

That have not oft mis-heard the prompter’s cue, 

Stammered and stumbled and the wrong parts played 
And life a Tragedy of Errors made.’ 

The glorj*^ of the past and the brightness of the hope for the future sustains 
man’s faith : 

‘And I count him wise, 

Who loves so well Man’s noble memories 
He needs must love Man’s nobler hopes yet more.’ 

That is an expression of the nineteenth century creed of Progress which, in 
*A Death in the Desert’, Browning says, is — 

‘Jlan’s distinctive mark alone. 

Not God’s, and not the beasts’ ; God is, they are ; 

Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.’ 

Jolm Morley, looldng back in the evening of his days to the period when he 
also shared passionatel 3 ' in this faith, assorted that Progress stands for a 
working belief that the modern world will never consent to do without. In the 
poem entitled ‘The Dream of Man’, Watson also puts forward the view that 
struggle, effort, aspiration are what make life liveable. Man is shown in it 
as having conquered Death, but that gives him no satisfaction. Life without 
any necessity for conquest seems empty. At ‘his dreadfid zenith’, he cries 
for help to God: 

‘And Deity paused and hearkened, then turned to the undivine. 

Saying, “ 0 man, my Creature, thy lot was more blest than Mine. 

I taste not delight of seeking, nor the boon of longing know. 

There is but one joy transcendent, and I hoard it not but bestow. 

I heard it not nor have tasted, but freely I gave it to thee 
The joy of most glorious striving, which dieth in victory.” ’ 

I liave mentioned earlier some of the brief criticisms of some men of 
letters which Watson hOiS put into verse ; a word may now be said of the volume 
wliich he called ‘Excursions in Criticism’, and which he described as ‘the 
prose recreations of a rhj^mer’. It was published in 1893. Two critical dicta 
deserve to be specially noted: ‘True criticism, when it approaches the work 

of the masters, can never be quite cool it is the critic’s business to feel, 

just as much as to see’. And, secondly, ‘There can be no doubt that Style is 
the great antiseptic in literature — ^the most powerful preventive against 
decay’. Two other short sentences may be quoted — ^tbis on Saintsbury — 
‘Mere ease of style often gets more credit than is its due. It is ease with 
power, or ease with splendour that is the valuable thing ’ ; and this on James 
Russell Lowell — ^‘It is delightfully fresh and tonic, with a certain saline shrewd- 
ness in it, reminding us that it has come across the ocean’. But two more 



330 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


elaborate passages will illustrate the quality of his critical judgments and 
specially the earnestness which mark them . Writing of Burns, he says : 

‘All Burns’s qualities are on the great scale. Look at his humour. 
This laughter is no craclding of thorns under a pot, but a sheer blazing 
and roaring of piled-up faggots of fun. It is the very riot and revelry^ 
of mirth; there is something demoniacal about this hilarity. Even the 
coarseness that goes with it hardly offends us, it is so manifestly and 
naturally of a piece with the utter licence and abandonment which this 
lord of literary nonsense has for the nonce decreed.’ 

This of Ibsen: • 

‘ He shows us little but the ugliness of things ; the colour seems to 
fade out of the sunset, the perfume seems to perish from the rose, in his 
presence. But if power and impressiveness are their own justification, 
Ibsen is justified; for whatever else he may or may not be, he is powerful, 
he is impressive. To those enthusiasts, however, who wotdd place 
him on an equality with the greatest dramatists, sane and sober criticism 
can only reply: No; this narrow intensity of vision, this preoccupation 
with a part of existence, is never the note of the masters : they deal 
with life: he deals only with death-in-life. They treat of society; he 
treats only of the rotteimess of society. Their subject is human nature 
— ^his, human disease.’ 

Watson does not attain the emmence of the masters. He has not their 
spontaneity , nor their breadth and depth. But as one who upheld the dignity 
of the muses and strove to serve them assiduously, as a skilled craftsman, he 
holds a high place. As he says himself : 

‘Not mine the rich and showering hand, that strews 
The facile largesse of a stintless muse. 

A fitful presence, seldom tarrying long. 

Capriciously she touches me to song — 

Then leaves me to lament her fiight in vain, 

And wonder will she ever come again.’ 


THE HISTOHY OF THE SRI VIJAYANARAYANA TEMPLE 
OF BELUR (MYSORE STATE) 

By 

Dr. M. H. Ebishka, M.A., D.Litt. (Lond.), Director of Archaeology, Mysore, 
formerly Professor of History, Mysore University 

Belttr is a small town now; but eight hundred years ago it was the capital 
of a mighty empire ruled by a line of Yadava kings known as the Hoysalas, 
This dynasty was at first subordinate to the Chalukya Empire, but later on 
it became independent and ultimately controlled the destinies of even the 
Cholas and Pandyas in the far south of India. 


THE HISTORY OE THE SRI VIJAYANARAYAHA TEMPLE OP BELHR 


331 


Hoysala Structure 


The first ruler to break off ffom the Chalukyan yoke was Iriug Vishnu- 
The Temple vardhana popularly known also, as Bittiga or Bittideva 
and it was he who built the main temple of Kesava in 
Belur. The artistic greatness of this structure has aU along been attracting 
to the place crowds of visitors, both Indian and foreign. Students of art 
have never ceased to wonder at the grandeur of the structures, the charm of 
the sculptures, the variety of the ornamental details and the minute and 
delicate carvings of the pillars and panels, the doorways and ceilings. The 
successive friezes, rising one upon another, depict a series of decorative motifs, 
birds, animals or dancers, aU full of life and vigour, with a bewildering variety 
of attitudes and movements. A valuable monograph has been prepared for 
publication, giving an exhaustive description of the temple, and its archi- 
tecture and sculptures, with numerous photographs and drawings. 

The inscriptions state that Vishnuvardhana built the temple in com- 
memoration of his victory against the Chola viceroy of 
Talkad, while tradition has it that he built the temple in 
token of his having been converted to Vaishnavism by the great teacher Bama- 
nujacharya, who had for a time migrated from the Chola country to the realm 
of the Hoysala king. Brom a detailed study of the structures, it looks very 
probable that he built only the star-shaped garbhagriJia, the sukanasi and the 
cruciform navaranga. The large niches, friezes and sculptures on the outside, 
as also the beautifully designed inside pillars and ceilings, including three of 
the doorways, were carved in his time. The garbhagriJia was surmounted 
by a high star-shaped tower of brick and mortar supported by wood-work 
and plated with gold-gilded copper sheets. Standing on a high platform on 
the top of a rising ground, the structure had a co mm an ding appearance. 
The beautiful image of Kesava, called Vijayanarayana by the builder, was 
installed in the sanctum in 1117 A.D. 

At about the same time, Vishnuvardhana’s senior queen Santaladevi, 
though inclined to Jainism, did not fail to make her con- 
tribution. She got built the Chennigaraya temple, 
similar in form to the king’s temple, though less elaborate and less ornamental. 
The image of Chennigaraya installed by her is almost exactly like that of 
Kesava in the main temple, though smaller in size. It bears the votive 
inscription of the queen. 

Narasimha I, son and successor of Vishnuvardhana, made grants for the 
maintenance of the temple and the regular conduct of 
worship. The existence of his Durbar scene to the north 
of the navaranga doorway indicates that he might have made some improve- 
ments in the temple. 

The next king Ballala 11 got constructed in 1176 a fine pond called 
allala II Va^udevatirtha to the north-east of the temple and in 

1180 a low-roofed storehouse in the north-west comer 
of the compound. Among other works carried out during his reign may be 
mentioned the kitchen on the eastern side near the well and the rampart wall 


Chennigaraya 


.Narasimha I 



332 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


with its two mahadvaras. The navarangd pavilion of the main temple, 
which up to now was open on all sides, was covered with perforated screens 
and the three entrances were provided with massive battened wooden doors. 
Supporting towers were erected on either side of each doorway, while in the 
interior of the temple the navaranga was separated from the suhanasi by the 
insertion of a beautifully carved potstonc doorway. ISirther, in the com- 
pound of the temple, a shrine with charming sculptures like those at the 
Kedaresvara temple at Halebid was constructed for god Viranarayana. 

In the days of Vira Ballala III one of his officers, named Somayya 
Danayaka, got the central tower rebuilt with brick and wood. 

When the Tughlaks invaded the Dakhan, their officer Gangu Salar of 
Kalburgi laid siege to the temple and burnt its gateway, 
vijayanagar Shortly afterwards he founded the Bahamani d3Tiasty. 

The Vijayanagar emperors spared no pains in preserving, as a matter of 
policy, all that was good and beautiful. In 1381 Kampanna, an officer of 
Harihara II, set up four granite pillars to support the cracked roof stones 
in the sukariasi of the main temple. In 1387 Malagarasa, another officer, 
replaced the broken kalam with a rolled-gold one. ' In 1397 Gunda, a general 
under Harihara 11, built the seven-storeyed gopura in place of the old malia- 
dvara which had been burnt and pulled down by Gangu Salar. During the 
succeeding years three important buildings, namely, the Saumyanayaki 
shrine, the large mantapa on the west and the Andal slirino were put up 
behind the main temple; in their construction materials from the ruined 
Hoysala buildings at several places were freely used. A good part of the 
navaranga of the Chennigaraya temple was also rebuilt during the Vijayanagar 
period, while a number of minor erections were done here and there in the 
compound of the temple, lilte the dipa-slambha, the uyyale-mantapa, the 
yaga-sala and the Narasimha and Hama sluines. Dining the fifteenth cen- 
tury the materials of the ruined Siva and Jain temples were utilized for the 
construction of the Naganayakana mantapa right in front of the main temple. 
Naganayaka mentioned here was possibly an officer imder Saluva Narasinga 
of Vijayanagar. The Tuluva emperors of Vijayanagar claimed the deity as 
their family god. Several repairs and minor constructions were undertaken 
and completed during the period of the Nayak chiefs of Belur. 

The work of the Mysore kings in Belur is seen ever since the beginning 
Mysore Kings eighteenth century. A small kalyana mantapa on 

the north side of the' temple was built in 1709. Another 
mantapa and a small pond were constructed in 1717. Venkata, a chief of 
Belur, who remade the tower of the main temple in 1736, was a vassal of 
Krishnaraja II of Mysore. But shortly afterwards the tower became damaged 
once again and was repaired by a certain Nanjayya, an officer Krishna- 
raja n. In the eighties of the last century the vimana tower became so 
ruined that it had to be dismantled to save the main temple from collapsing. 
But the courtyard still remained overcrowded with ugly and highly dilapidated 
structures of later periods. 



THE HISTOBY OE THE SBl VIJAYAHAEAYANA TEMBLE OE BELUE 


333 


On the recommendation of the Archaeological Department in 1929, the 
question of opening out the courtyard and renovating 
temple stage by stage was taken up by the Mysore 
Government, and the Belur Temple Renovation Com- 
^ mittee was formed in 1935 for carrying out the work systematically. All the 
ugly and dilapidated later structures like the Naganayakana mantapa were 
removed and the sculptures were cleared of age-old soot and wax. The 
ceiling of the suJcanasi, the north-east wall of the main temple and the sanctum 
of the Chennigaraya slirine were rebuilt, the buildings abutting the east, 
south and north ramparts were repaired, the compound was paved, new 
images of Ramanuja and Garuda replaced the damaged ones, a new car shed 
was built, the front of the temple was improved, electric lighting was installed 
and a host of smaller repairs were carried out. The materials were obtained 
free locally. The Archaeological, Muzrai, Public Works and the Electrical 
Departments gave their supervision with little extra cost and the funds 
generously granted by Government from the Muzrai and State funds were 
utilized mainly for the workmen’s wages and other sundry expenses. The 
total work carried out is estimated at nearly five lalchs of rupees, while the 
actual expenses have amounted to only a little over one lakh. This conser- 
vation work and the scientific skfil, zeal and co-operation, evinced by the 
various limbs of the Government of Mysore in cairying it out, have won the 
admiration of the Director-General of Archaeology in India and other dis- 
tinguished visitors. 

Thanlcs to the generosity of His late Highness Sri Krishnaraja Wadiyar 
rV and His Higlmess Sri Jayachamaraja Wadiyar 
Bahadur — may His dynasty endure for ever — the labours 
of the Renovation Committee have been rewarded by the preservation of one 
of the greatest treasmre-houses of Indian art. The temple has been restored 
as nearly as possible to its original form. Only two major items of work 
now remain to be attended to: the mahadvara and the vimana. 

In commemoration of the work carried out during the enlightened rule 
of His late Highness Sri Ejrislmaraja Wadiyar IV and as a mark of His High- 
ness’ devotion to the deity and personal conservation 
Bhakta Vigraha temple, a statue in bronze of His late Higlmess 

was got prepared at the Chamarajendra Technical Institute, Mysore. It is 
now consecrated and installed at the temple along with the metallic statue 
which is traditionally identified with Vishnuvardhana, the builder of the 
temple. 

Following the ancient custom, a commemorative inscription in Kannada 
has also been set up, giving a very brief account of the 
history and conservation of the temple. 


H.H. The Maharaja 


Commemoration 



A NOTE ON PERSIAN, TURiaSH AND ARABIC MSS. 

By 

LIr. Eazal Ahmad Khan, M.A. 

The Archaeological Department acquired a few years ago a unique 
collection of manuscripts of great historical value. This is the donation of 
Dr. B. 0. Law, a well-loiown scholar and philanthropist of Calcutta. 

The most important of these manuscripts is a Turkish manuscript 
of the work of klir Ali Sher Beg Nawai. klir Ali Sher Beg was bom at 
Herat, and studied at Meshad and Samarkand. After having completed 
his studies ho entered the service of Sixltan Husain ibn Biqara, the ruler of 
Herat. Sultan Husain in recognition of his distinguished services, invested 
Llir Ali Sher with the dignity of Beg and appointed him governor of Asterbad. 
But klir Ali Sher Beg was not content with this job and renounced the pro- 
fession of arms in favour of spiritual contemplation and literary leisure. 
Mir Ali Sher Beg was an excellent poet in the Persian as well as the Turkish 
language. His Diwan or collection of odes in the Chaghtai or pure Turkish 
rmder the poetical title of ‘Nawai’ amounts to ton thousand couplets, and he 
had left a noble monument of his learning and assiduity in his parody of 
Nizami’s five poems, containing nearly thirty thousand couplets which are 
universally admired. In the Persian language ‘Nawai’ wrote a Diwan, under 
the TakhaUus or poetical title of Fani (Perishable). In Turkish poetry ‘Nawai ’ 
has no rival. The present manuscript which is entitled ‘Khamsa-i-Nawai’ 
comprises the following five poems: — 

(а) Sab-i-Sayyara, ‘The Seven Planets’, for Nizami’s ‘Seven Faces 

or Images’. 

(б) Haiyrat-ul-Abrar, ‘The String of Pearls’, for Nizami’s ‘Treasury 

of Secrets’. 

(c) Shirin Farhad, ‘The Loves of Farhad and Shirin’, for Nizami’s 

‘Khusrau and Shirin’. 

(d) Laila Majnun, ‘The Loves of Laila Majnun’ are both alike. 

(e) Aeena-i-Sikandri, ‘The Rampart of Alexander’, for Nizami’s History 

of Alexander. 

In three poems Mir Ali Sher Nawai has eulogized Mn.n1n.TiB. Jami and 
Sultan Husain.' In the fourth he has eulogized Badi-Uzzaman, the Sultan’s 
son. In the fifth poem he has, after eulogizing the Sultan, given hb-n advice. 
Nawai dedicated this work to Sultan Husain ibn Baiqara, whose beautiful 
portrait! in ink-drawing of extreme finish we see in the manuscript. 

On different folios of the manuscript there are royal seal impressions of 
Mughal emperors, and endorsements of Emperor Hamayun and Maulana Jami. 
Careful examination of the seal impressions has revealed that these impressions 
are doubtful. As for example, when we study the seal impression of Emperor 
Babur his father’s name comes out as Sultan Shikh Mirza, whilo whose real 
name was Umar Shaikh Mirza. Again in the same seal impression there is 


A NOTE ON PERSIAN, aJURKlSH AND ASABIO MSS. 


335 


one letter which appears to have been nusengraved as nothing can he made 
out of it. For the ‘Great Seal’ of Akhar, the folio of a manuscript is not the 
proper place to be stamped. This seal which contains the names of Akbar 
and those of his ancestors up to Amir Timur, was stamped only on Kingly 
Farmans and letters to foreign kings. 

The engraver seems to have copied the impression of this Great Seal 
from same Akbari Farman. As regards the genuineness of the endorsements 
nothing can be said at this stage with certainty. The object of stamping 
forged seals on old manuscripts and paintings is simply to give historical value 
and importance to them, and afber it becomes a problem to distiTigiiiRh between 
the genuine and the forged ones. 

The present condition of this manuscript caused by bookworms gives 
some indication of its wanderings from place to place and &om person to 
person, but since the later Mughal times when Turkish was hardly read by 
the courtiers in India, it is unlikely that it was much read or enjoyed. 

There is no colophon giving the date of its transcription. But on folio 
la, year 886 A.H. is written which is said to have been put down by Maulana 
Jami when writing the endorsement above this date. 

Another manuscript of great value and interest is the famous *Khamsa-i- 
Nizami’, ‘Quintet’, or ‘Panj Ganj’, or ‘Five Treasures’, of Nizami of Ganjah, 
the celebrated romantic poet of Persia (A.D. 1140-1203). It took Nizami 
about thirty years (1165-98) to compose five poems and afber his death when 
arranged together formed the ELhamsa. 

The immortal poems were written at the solicitation of contemporary 
monarchs and princes. These poems not only contain mere love stories, but 
they ‘teach moral lessons of imaffected piety and true wisdom, and also depict 
the good and bad tendencies of the human mind, the struggles and passions 
of men’. 

The manuscript is in a much better concUtion than the Khamsa-i-Nawai. 
It is elegantly written in Nastahq characters and lavishly filuminated with 
Persian paintings illustrating the text. The Persian artists took their subject 
from poetry and romance. The artist fused into his design the utmost ex- 
pressions in telling his story, and this fact is witnessed in these paintiags. 
The paintings which are 11 in number represent the phase of Persian art 
before its maturity and introduction in India tmder the Mughal emperors. 
Human action and emotion remain the principal theme in these paintings. 

Seals of Mughal emperors and nobles such as Babur, Akbar, Abdur Rahim 
and Aurangzeb, are also to be seen, the last of which being those of Husain 
Quli Khan, and Syed Muizz Khan, nobles of the time of Emperor Muhammad 
Shah. The fate of these seal impressions appears to be the same,- as those of 
the previous ones. 

There is a bit of controversy regarding the date of transcription of this 
manuscript. The first poem of the IQiamsa is not dated, but the dates in other 
poems hardly correspond to each other. Colophon at the end of Khusraw 
and Shirin gives the date 855, the figure 8 is somewhat doubtful. Laila 



336 


B. 0. IiAW VOIiTTME 


Majiiun’s colophon, boars the date 966, which appears to ho later addition. 
At the end of fourth x^oem tho date is given in letters and figmes — 855, with 
the name of tho month Jamadi-us-Sani, but tlio word Sani has been mis- 
spelled. Tho colophon of tho last ijoom Sikandor Namah has boon damaged. 
Tho name of tho month Jamadi-ris-Sani and tho unit and tenth of tho date^^ 
viz. 65, are quite clear. So the name Jamadi-us-Sani and the units and tenths 
of two poems, i.o. Haft Paikar and Sikandor Namah correspond to each 
other. So we can infer tho date of transcription of tho manuscript as 865 A.H. 

Another Persian manuscript is tho famous love story of Laila Majnun, 
an Eastern romance sometimes called tho Persian Romeo and Juliet, and 
which is similar in some respect to Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and in imitation 
of Nizami’s well-kno'wn Masnawi of tho same stylo, written by Maulana 
AbduEah Hatifi, nephew of tho celebrated poet Jami. Among tho numerous 
Persian poems on the love story of Lada Majnun, that of Maulana Hatifi seems 
to be the simplest and most pathetic. 

The present manuscript is believed to have been written in the time of 
Emperor Alcbar. On tho paintmgs in this manuscript we see the names of the 
painters who flourished during the reign of Akbar, such as Farukh tho Qalmaq 
and Tara. ' 

The manuscript is in good condition. It is illustrated with 7 paintings 
relating to the story, which are supposed to bo tho best specimens of Mughal 
art in India. It was dmring the reign of Alcbar that Persian influence in • 
Mughal art was apparent, and witliin no time a new style developed. Alcbar 
tried to create an art that would bear comparison with that of his ancestors, 
and the Indian miniatures are thus translations of Persian originals. Bihzad’s 
paintings appealed much to the Indian taste. The artists of Akbar’s time 
have worked in the same stylo and it is difficult to find out the difference. 

The calligraphy is of a very high standard in Nastaliq characters. The 
borders of the paintings are lavishly embellished in gold with the pictures of 
birds and animals. The name of the transcriber and the date are not given. 

There is another Persian manuscript named Nasihat-ul-Muluk written by 
Shaikh Sadi of Shiraz (A.D, 1175-1292), a celebrated Persian poet. Nasiliat- 
ul-Muluk, which means, ‘Advice to Kings’, is a small tract and was written, 
as Shaikh Sadi states, in the beginning of the book at the request of a friend 
whom he addresses as his son. 

The manuscript is well written in Nastaliq style, which is of very high 
standard. The borders of the manuscript are beautifully decorated with gold 
floral designs. 

In the Delhi Fort Museum, there is an original Persian petition which 
was presented to Emperor Shah Jahan. This petition was written and 
presented by Abdur Rashid Dailmi, better known as Aga Khan. He was a 
court caUigraphist of Emperor Shah Jahan, as well as tutor of Prince Dara 
Shikoh. 

The calligraphy of the present manuscript resembles to a very great 
extent with the above-mentioned petition, and .so we can safely conclude 



LiliATILAKA — STUDY 


337 


that the manuscript was transcribed and presented by Ahdur Bashid Daihni 
to Emperor Shah Jahan. Moreover the portrait of Shah Jahan in the manu- 
script bears a very close similarity with the portrait of Shah Jahan in the 
petition. The last few pages of the manuscript are missing. 

Besides the Turkish and Persian manuscripts one is in Arabic. The 
manuscript contains the Arabic collection of traditions of the holy Prophet 
Muhammad (may peace be on him), with special reference to prayers, styled 
Ham-i-Hasin, ‘The Strong Castle’. The prayers were compiled by Shafiite 
Shailvh Shamsuddin Abu Alkhair Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Ali bin 
Yusuf arumari aldemishM alshirazi, known as ibn-aljazari who was bom in 
A.H. 751 (A.D. 1350) at Damascus and died at the age of eighty-two (A.D. 
1432). Aljazari completed this collection at Damascus in A.D. 1389, revised, 
partly enlarged, partly oimtailed it in Shiraz and then it was sent by Maulana 
Najib Shafi to Ahmed Shah of Gujrat. 

The book is divided into six chapters. There are comprehensive e^la- 
natory notes in Persian on the margins of the text. The calligraphy is of 
second rate in Naskh style. The first two pages of each chapter are lavishly 
decorated with gold and other colours. 

At the end of the manuscript there is an endorsement which indicates 
that the present manuscript was transcribed for one Mian Saif-uddin. The 
present condition is due to damage by worms and the total number of pages 
is 515. The name of the transcriber and the date are not given. 


LiLATILAKA— A STUDY 
By 

Pboe. K. Bama Pisbaeoh, M.A. 

laldtilaka is the oldest available treatise on Malayalam grammar and 
rhetoric and as such it occupies a unique place. It has attracted considerable 
attention among Malayali scholars and critics. The text is now available in 
two editions, the original edition of Sri A. K. Pisharody and the latest one of 
Sri K. V. Moosad; but the two editions do not reveal any material difference. 
There have also appeared a large number of papers, almost all of them in Ma- 
layalam, some discussing the date, others pointing out differences in reading 
and still others elaborating the grammar of the text. The importance of the 
text is our main excuse to add to the list of papers already existing on the 
text. 

The author has quoted a large number of verses and these give us the names 
of over thirty heroines, who resolve themselves into two dozen Ndyikas,' 
presumably from different works then popular in the land. These verses 
depict how the nhamia of feminine form ensnare, enslave and stupefy man, 
sometimes immersing him in bliss ecstatic and sometimes steepmg him in 
the throes of misery and .despair, and thus indirectly sing the glories of perfect 
womanly beauty in their fullest and richest sex-appeal. The obvious con- 
22 



338 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


elusion, then, is that there existed anterior to the •period of the author of this 
text a rich crop of love lyrics in our language — a view wliich is only supported 
by the works US., UC-0., and K8.; and tliis must certainly set those thinking 
who would put down the beginnings of our literature to the post-fifteenth 
century on the basis merely of the assumed dating of the RG., supposed to be a 
Malayalam work, which a section of our scholars, uncritically enough, hold 
to be the first literary work in Malayalam language. 

It is, again, interesting to remember that none of the heroines, described 
in the verses cited in the text, belongs to the Sanskritic pantheon. The love 
lyrics of the period, then, drew their Nayihao from local, possibly, contem- 
porary life. It is a very pertinent question to ask here why our poets did not 
go in for Sanskritic heroines and themes. Indeed this is an important question. 
For, in the first place, Sanskrit has all along been exerting a preponderating 
infi.uence upon our language and literature, and in the second place, since the 
fifteenth century, all our literary themes were taken maiuly, if not solely, from 
Sanskrit literature. 

The earliest specimens of Malayalam literature, we hold, were Tolan’s 
verses — translations of the verses in the two Sanskrit dramas, 8D. and T8. 
These renderings, naturally enough, had Sanskritic themes, were couched 
in classical metres and were in a language which was made, perhaps con- 
sciously, grotesque by freely mixing up Sanskrit and Malayalam in varying 
proportions — a type of language which, under the title ManipravSkm, later 
becomes the stylistic norm of our literary language. These first renderings, 
made for the use of Vidusaka on the local stage, were, however, intended to 
serve a comic effect — to evoke the laughter of the audience. Naturally, 
therefore, if this mode was wholly borrowed for literary use in Malayalam, 
there was the possibility of such literature being treated in a comic spirit. 
To obviate this difficulty, the older writers introduced, we believe, a change 
in the mode which consisted in replacing Sanskrit themes by local themes — 
an aspect which we find illustrated in U8. and UC-0. Naturally enough at a 
later date, when ManipravSlam became the accepted literary style, as a result 
of the popularity of Sandeias and Gampus we find a ftirther elaboration of 
Sanskrit themes in the same form and in the same language, as evidenced by 
the large output of Campus in our literature during the fifteenth century with 
their counterpart of a local theme worked up in Mahakdvya form in the GU. 
and a Sanskrit theme worked in Dravidian form in KG. With ManipravaUm 
as the accepted literary language, the possible permutation is a Sanskrit 
or local theme in Sanskrit or Dravidian form, and we get typical instances for 
all the four varieties. The first creative period of our literature was, there- 
fore, a period of experimentation of forms and themes in Manipravdlam 
style ; and no wonder that the author of LT. distinguishes at least nine varieties 
of this style — a something which only substantiates, indirectly, though, the 
conclusion we have already set forth that there must have existed numerous 
love-lyrics in our language in the period, immediately preceding the age of the 
author of LT. 


22B 



IitLSTTLAKA — A STUDY 


339 


The citations in the text indicate originality of poetic conception as well. 
Evidences for instance the comparison of a lady’s calf to a bottle, her foot to 
a tortoise, her neck' to a bottle, her cheeks adorned with sweat to a mirror set 
with pearls or Laksmi adorned with drops of milk, as she rose out of the milk 
^oceau, her speech to drops of milk, her laughter to a piece of milk in the beaks 
of a parrot, or a swan besmeared with honey or a pearl set in ruby, her com- 
plexion to the tendrils of a mango tree, etc. Compare again the quarrel of 
the varied organs of sense in the raptures of sensuous bliss or the description 
of a lady going to temple in wet clothes — a sight familiar with us even today, 
or the description of Srngara of the Sambhoga variety based upon what we 
may term free love, so characteristic of our land — a jfreedom which has ignor 
rantly been interpreted to mean nothing short of licentiousness. Thus the 
innovations introduced in the body naturally enough affected the spirit as 
well of our poetry. 

The heroes mentioned in the citations in the text are Goda Martapda 
Varma of Kolamba; Vira Ravi Varma of Venad, and Vikrama Pandya and 
Pandyeia of the Pandyan kingdom. The first of these is described as a very 
generous ruler and great warrior. He had no issue to succeed him for a 
long time, but, at last towards the close of his life, an heir was bom 
to him, which event he signalized by lavish gifts to aU. The last three 
are described as fighting successfully against the Turnskas. We learn also 
the Vikrama Pandya and the Pandyan king were not getting on happily 
together, that Vira Ravi Varma fought with the former, defeated and cap- 
tured him prisoner ajid then having made a present of him to the Papdyan 
king, mitigated the insult done him by marrying Vikrama’s daughter. 
These verses, then, treasure up fov us the joint endeavours of MaiUiyalis 
and Pdndyans to oust Muslims from South India. And lastly, one .of 
the verses, cited from KS., has preserved for us an ancient tradition that 
Kalidasa intended his MS. for his own wife, the sister of the great king 
Vikramaditya, and this lends support for the traditional view which associates 
Kalidasa with the court of Vikramaditya. 

On the basis of the personalities, described in the citations, given in the 
text, an attempt may be m&de to fix up the age of the work. Papdyan 
history tells us that Maravarman Kula^ekhara Deva had a co-regent, named 
Vikrama Papdya, who died in 1296 A.D. and, since then up till 1401 A.D., 
that history does not know of any Pandyan prince of this name. Could 
Vikrama, figuring in the citations here, be identified with the co-regent of 
Maravarman Kula^ekhara Deva? Such an identification would be an ana- 
chronism, since he is described as having fought the Muslims who came to 
South India only fomireen years after his death. Secondly, Pandyan^Mstory, 
so far as it is known, is silent, regarding the enmity between Maravarman 
and his co-regent Vikrama; it is equally silent regarding a Wra Ravi Varma 
of Venad fi gkfa'ug against Vikrama and then defeating and capturing him 
prisoner and then the two again fighting together against the M uslim s on 
behalf of Maravarman Kula^ekhara. The citations in LT. should, therefore. 


340 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


be taken as giving us a new glimpse of Pandyan history which has yet to be 
located historically. 

Some scholars have identified Vita Ravi Varma of Vepad with Ravi 
Varma Kuladekhara Deva of the Kupakas. Wo have elsewhere noticed the^ 
untenability of this identification. To summarize our arguments; In the ' 
first place, Kupaka and Ve^ad wore distinctly different kingdoms during 
this period and continued to be so for centuries afterwards; and it is mani- 
festly absurd to identify the king of one kingdom ^yith a kiug of another 
kingdom, purely because they happen to possess the same name. Secondly, 
there is no reference at all in any of Ravi Varma’s epigraphs that he ever 
fought Vikrama Pandya of the Pandyans — ^note Ravi Varma of the Rupakas 
came into limelight only after Vilcrama Patidya’s death — defeated him, 
took him prisoner and made a present of him to the Papdyan king or that he 
married his daughter: on the other hand, they tell us that he fought Vira 
Pandya and married Maravarman Kula^ekhara's daughter. Thirdly, we have 
no evidence at all, fiimished either by his own inscriptions or by the accounts 
given by Muslim historians, that Ravi Varma ever fought the Muslims. And 
lastly, contemporaneously with Ravi Varma of the Kupakas, there were at 
least two kings of Venad which epigraphy gives us, namely, Ravi Goda Varma 
and Aditya Varma. Hence Ravi Varma of the Kupakas cannot be identified 
with Ravi Varma of Veiniad, mentioned in the verses cited in LT., despite 
the fact that the identity has been advanced and accepted by many scholars 
here and elsewhere; and, consequently, Vilcrama Pandya cannot be identified 
with the prince of the same name who was the co-regent of Maravarman 
Kulatekhara nor with his illegitimate son, Vira Papdya Deva. 

The citation ftom U8. found in LT. clearly indicates that the latter could 
not have been written earlier than 1360 A.D. We have, therefore, to find 
out a Vira Ravi Varma of Venad and a Vikrama Pandya in the latter half of 
the fourteenth century who successftilly fought the Muslims and drove them 
away from South India. We do find a Ravi Varma mentioned in the ancient 
history of VeiGiad about 1400 A.D. and Prof. K. A. Sastry mentions a Vikrama 
Pandya, whose accession is placed about 1401 A.D. Since the citation in the 
text makes a distinction between Vikrama Papdya and a PandyeSa, the events 
connected with Vikrama Pandya must have taken place before 1401 A.D. 
Here, then, we get one limit of the age of the work; and we know that Muslims 
were fijially ousted from South India by 1375 A.D. 

This view is further borne out, it seems to us, by the very last of the 
citations given in LT, The author’s friends and relatives are all dead one . 
after another; there is nothing for which he should wish to live; he has him- 
self become old and infirm and, therefore, he admonishes his mind to devote 
itself to the contemplation of God. The poet thus describes himself as the 
last of a glorious band of scholar-poets who lived and wrote during those 
stirifrtg times. If this intei^retation is acceptable, then we may find a 
Kalivacaka in the expression Cittarm occurring in the last poda of the verse. 


LiliSTIIiAKA — STUDY 


341 


■which gives the year 1391 A.D. in which case this "will be additional support 
to the limit we have set do'vra. 

Dr. Gk)da Varma of the University of Travancore has advanced the view 
that the author of LT. has in his elaboration of Alamkaras followed Nageia 
►Bhatta and, therefore, must be put do'wn to the post-Nagesa period. But 
we might well raise the question whether or not we may argue the other way. 
In other words, could not Nage&i have borrowed from the author of LT. 1 
The author has sho'wn himself quite a distinguished scholar as evidenced by 
his remarks on the linguistic features of Malayalam. That a IVlalayali scholar 
is not incapable of original -Tiews in the field of Alamkdrc^astra has been 
amply proved by K-L., -vTritten by Udayottunga, who lived more or less in 
the latter half of the fourteenth century. Hence we are constrained to 
observe that Dr. Goda Varma’s views need not be the last word as regards the 
latest limit of the author. As matters stand now, this has to be decided on 
the basis of what internal e'vidence we get from LT. The absence of aU quo- 
tations from the medieval Malayalam literature, such as KQ., B-C., CU., N-G., 
etc., would indicate that the author must have lived and written his work 
before this period, that is, before the middle of the fifteenth century, and this 
view is only strengthened by the linguistic e'vidence, so carefully documented 
by my friend and colleague, Mr. L. V. R. Iyer. We might, therefore, conclude 
that LT. must have been produced some time after 1400 and before 1480 A.D., 
possibly the author heralding the dawn of that glorious band of scholar- 
poets, collectively known as Patin^rakkavikal, who graced the court of 
Calicut in the latter half of the fifteenth century. 

Select Bibucobaphy 

1. OBiomAi. 'WoBKS — ^E nglish — 

(i) Ancient Oochim E. B. Fishsroti {AO.). 

(ii) Pdpdyan Kingdom’. K. A. N. Sastry (PK.). 

(iii) South India and her Mohamedan RuUrSi S. K. Ayyangar {SIMR.). 

(iv) Vihrama the Great of Calicut’. K. R. Pieharoti {VQO.). 

2. Obigieal Viosss — Mat.* vat. am — 

(i) History of Malayalam Literature’. N. Fanikksr {HML.). 

(ii) Nammuie DriyaJcalaJcah K. R. Fisharoti {ND.). 

(iii) Vanjibirudui K. R. Fisbaroti (FB.). 

(iv) Vijiianadipika: U. S. P. Iyer (FD.). 

(v) Ooiriprabhavamt Ed. E. R. Fisbaroti {OP.). 

3. Sanskbit Tests — 

(i) Kaumudi on Locanai Udayottunga {K-L.). 

(ii) I/datildkam’. Ed. A. E. Fisbaroti {LT.). 

(iii) MukundamSla’. Ed. E. R. Fisbaroti {MM.). 

(iv) Mayurasandeia: Udayottunga {MS.). 

(v) Subhadradhanahjayai EulaSekbara {SD.). 

(vi) Simvilasakavyai Domodara {SK.). 

(w) TapatUamvarapat EulaSekbara {TS.). 

4. Malayalam Texts — 

(i) Bapayudhacampu {B-0.). 

(ii) Oandrotsava {CU.). 



342 


B. 0. IiAW VOIi'DME 


(iii) KraxiagStJia: Corussory {KG.), 

(iv) KoJcasandcSa (KS.). 

(v) Nai-§adhacampu {N-0,), 

(vi) Bamaearita {BO,). 

(vii) BamSgavacampu (B-0.). 

(viii) BSsahfda {BK.). 

(is) UtniiniZwandcio {VS,). 

(x) Uwivaticaritacampu {VO-0.). 

6. JOTJBNAtS — 

(i) The Bulletin of the Sir Bama Varma Besearcih Institute, Trioiiur {BSBVBI.), 

(ii) The New Indian Antiquary, Poona {NIA.). 

(Ui) The Indian Ristorical Quarterly, C^lcutto {IHQ.). 

(iv) The Maharaja’s College Magazine, Emnkulam {MOM.). 

(v) The Matrbhtimi Weekly, Calicut (MIF.). 

(vi) The Journal of Oriental Bescarch, Ifodraa {JOB.). 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OF 24-PARGANAS, BENGAL 

By 

Dr. S. P. Chatterjee, M.So., Ph.D., D.Litt., 

Department of Geography, Calcutta University 

I. INTRODTJOIIION 

The present paper embodies the results of a preliminary land utilization 
survey of the district carried out by the author with the assistance of his 
colleagues. A number of visits to different places were arranged to study 
the local conditions. Soil specimens collected by field-workers were sub- 
sequently analyzed in the soil laboratory of the department of geography, 
Calcutta University. The district lies on 26 one-inch sheets published by 
Survey of India, which were found to be indispensable in the study of the 
topographical features and drainage conditions of the district.^ Agricultural 
statistics published by Government of Bengal were verified in the field, and 
land utilization maps illustrating this paper were prepared on the basis of 
those data.2 

The origin of the district dates back to the fifties of the eighteenth century 
when the East India Company was striving to strengthen its position in the 
Gangetic delta. In 1757 they succeeded in acquiring about 9,000 sq. miles 
of area, that is to say, about one-sixth of the area of the present district, as a 
zamindari on payment of a fixed revenue. This area, including that of 
Calcutta granted to them by Nawab Zaffar Ali Khan was then divided into 
twenty-four parganas or revenue-units.^ Since then the district is known 
by the name of 24-Parganas, though it may be remembered that the greater 

1 79 B/2 to 79 B/16, 79 C/1, 79 C/2, 79 C/6, 79 C/6, 79 C/9, 79 0/10, 79 C/13, 79 C/14, 79 E/l, 
79 G/1, 79 G/2. 

^ Einal Report on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the district of 24-I’argana3, 
1936. 

3 According to Bai Saheh Anil Chandra Xialuri 12 were entire parganas, 11 part parganas 
and one was not a pargana — Melund mahal or Salt mahal. 



LAND UTIUZATTON IN THE DISTRICT OE 24--PARGANAS, BENOAIi 343 

part of the -present distnet originally belonging to the neighboniing parganas 
of Nadia and Jessore was added subsequently ^ and that Calcutta was se- 
parated as an administrative convenience from the 24-Parganas in the 
beginning of the nineteenth century. 

The importance of the district mainly lies in its geographical position. 
It occupies the south-western part of the Ganges delta between 88° and 88° 64' 
East Longitude and 22° 32' and 22° 64' North Latitude through which run 
the principal routes from the sea to the densely populated Gangetic plains of 
Northern India. The district is about 36 miles wide in the north and twice 
as much wide in the south. It covers a total area of 4,866 square miles, of 
which about one-quarter is stiU clothed with dense virgin forests. The district 
has well-defined boundaries in three directions. To the south of the district 
lies the Bay of Bengal, into which enter the Hooghly and Baimangal rivers, 
forming the western and eastern boundaries respectively. The northern 
boimdary of the district runs through a slightly raised tract, overlooking 
marshy areas on either side. The land boundaries do not mark off this 
district as a geographic unit, since the same t 3 rpe of relief and climate, and 
land utilization prevail in the bordering areas of the districts of Nadia, Jessore, 
Khulna, Hooghly, Howrah and Midnapore. 

n. Physiographio Backgrotted of Land Uthization 
Helief and Physiographic Divisions 

In a deltaic tract with a long coastline relief features cannot but be 
very gentle. The topography of 24-ParganaB is not an exception to this 
rule, though minor topographical contrasts are noticeable throughout the 
district. Unfortunately a detailed contour map of the district is not available, 
but the few surface spot heights marked on appropriate one-inch sheets reveal 
the broad features of the landscape. The whole area consists of one vast 
plain, gently sloping seaward. It is, however, traversed by low ridges formed 
either of river deposits (natural levees) or of artificially built-up. road and 
railway embankments. Several embankments have also been constructed 
in recent years to protect low-lying arable lands from the invasion of saline 
water. The interfluve area in the north is invariably studded with shallow 
lakes, which are gradually silting up (see Pigs. 1 and 2). The entire surface 
of the district including the embankments lies below the 30-foot contour. 

The highest surface spot height away from railway embankments is 
28 feet which was recorded at the village of Bira, about 12 miles to the west 
of Ichapur. The surface gradient in that part is almost imperceptible, less 
than two inches per mile. About 11 miles north-east of Bira in the neigh- 
bourhood of Berghom another spot height of 24 feet was recorded which 
reveals a local subsidence northward. The Padma stream in a broad meander- 
ing curve changes its course from south to north and flows towards this sub- 
sided area. North of Calcutta we come across the followiDg features. Pirstly, 


1 In 1860 there were as many as 62 parganas aocor^ng to hlajor Smythe. 


344 


B. O. I. AW VOLUME 



Eiq, 1. The district of 24-FaTganas showing the distribution of population. 

[Note that the railways serve only the densely populated parts. There are very few 
outside the Upper Hooghly Plain. The Southern Plains are enclosed by a system of canws. Note 
also that the marsh lands prevail in the north, and that wide estuaries penetrate through the coast. 
The braided type of river occurs in the Sundarbans.] 

Marsh Lands : — 

A, Baritibil. B, Nangla bil and a group of smaller lakes enclosed by the Padma. C, Balli bil. 
D, Calcutta Marshes. B, Bhubanpur bils. P, Panchilbaria bil. Gj Padma bu. H, Payna 
and Sareng bils. 

Towns : — 

1, Gobardanga. 2, Baduria. 3, Basirhat, 





liAKB UTILIZATION IN THE DISTEIOT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 346 

along the Hooghly there is strip of high ground, bounded on the east roughly 
by the Bengal-Assam main railway line. This marginal plain slopes 
more steeply than the interior plains, and hence is better drained. As such, 
it has provided in the past excellent sites for human settlements, and now 
^ntains a dense population. This plain continues southward, and hence- 
'orth be referred to as the Upper Hooghly Plain. In the north this plain 
slopes eastwards as well facing marsh lands which in deeper parts contain 
perennial water. This low-lying tract may be named as Bariti marshes. 
In approaching Calcutta from the north by rail or road one comes across a 
part of the Bariti marshes first near the railway station of Kankinara. The 
surface spot heights, along the railway embankments bordering the marshy 
area on the west, indicate a southward slope of the surface at the rate of 
one foot per mile. 

Further east stands another strip of high ground extending eastward 
from the present course of the Sunti Nadi. From east to west it is about 
5 miles wide. Here the ground slopes westward. It may be named the 
Sunti Plain. 

East of the Sunti Plain another low-lying area of about 100 square miles 
occurs, which is almost enclosed by a broad meandering curve of a sluggish 
stream, here known as the Padma. Within this area are found a series of 
orescent shaped depressions almost parallel to the present stream, aU being 
I abandoned courses of the same river (see Fig. 2). The pattern of the alluvial 
lakes suggests that the area has suffered some local disturbances which led 
to the gradual westering of the river from a pivotal point, leaving behind 
part of its course at successive stages. This area may be designated as the 
Padma Plain. Further east lies a somewhat raised ground, the Ichamati 
Plain, which slopes gently eastward. The Ichamati Plain overlooks in the 
east another marshy tract, locally known as the Ball! bil, which was once 
connected with the Dantbhanga marshes lying further south. These plains 
and marshes extending from the foot of the Upper Hooghly Plain right up 
to the eastern boundary of the district may be grouped together, and named 
as the Amdanga-Sarupnagar Plains. 

South of the northern plains stretches another group of plains, locally 
known as the Barasat-Basirhat Plains. The embankment of the Barasat- 
Basirhat Light Railway which runs through these plains from west to east 
forms a conspicuous feature of the landscape. The smdace spot heights on 
the railway embankment range between 28 feet in the west and 23 feet in the 
east, but these heights are no indication of the general level of the country, 
* which hardly rises over 10 feet. A continuous belt of dry plains, without 
being interrupted by north-south running rivers or their silted-up channels 
as in the north, enabled a railway and a metalled road to be built right across 
the country. In the southern margin of these plains occur marsh lands, of 
which the Bhubanpur marshes in the west are the deepest and contain water 
throughout the year (see Plate IVA). The low-lying tract in the east in- 
nln Hing the Padma bil is much shallower. 


346 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


The rich arable lands of the district comprising the southern plains occur 
to the south of Calcutta between the old and present courses of the Hooghly. 
The surface spot heights along the Kalighat-Falta railway range £:om 12 feet 
in the south to 16 feet in the north. West of the railway embankment the 
ground level drops to some 3 feet, as indicated by the surface spot height 
the Samalia Trigonometrical Station. The bank of the Hooghly immediately 
west of this low-lying plain is still lower by another 2 feet, as shown by the 
spot height at Brul. Tliis area may be named as the Budge-Budge-Bishnupur 
Plain. The ground rises, however, farther south in the neighbourhood of 
Diamond Harbour below the confluence of the Hooghly and the Damodar. 
The Damodar is the flrst important river to join the Hooghly in its lower 
reaches, and is partly responsible for raising the southern flood plains of the 
Hooghly higher than those of the north. The Eupnarayan river which enters 
into the Hooghly about 6 miles south of the flrst confluence supplemented 
the work of the other two rivers in raising the level of the flood plams. Most 
of the bench marks in these plaius indicate a height of over 20 feet. These 
higher areas may be referred to as the Kulpi-Diamond Harbour-Falta Plains. 
Along the eastern border of the plains an old course of the Hooghly 
with high banks is still recognizable. The high banks had once provided 
better sites for settlement than the neighbouring low-lying areas. These 
may be named as the Baruipur-Jaynagar Plains. 

The rest of the district is included in the Sundarbans proper, and forms 
a vast swamp, lying at the mercy of sea-water. This may be divided into 
three parts based on the degree of land utilization — (1) the Northern Plains 
of the Sundarbans, (2) the Reclaimed Sundarbans, and (3) Sundarban .Forests. 
The northern plams of the Sundarbans have been settled so long ago that 
they retain very few traces of reclamation, except in the east. In these 
plains high village sites, so characteristic of thje densely populated plains of 
the district, are few and far between. The western part of these plains, 
however, was settled much earlier than the eastern, and hence village sites 
much above the general level of the coimtry concentrate' more in the west. 
These plains may be divided further into three parts, the Hasnabad Plain 
in the east, the Harua Plain in middle and the Bhangar-Eajarhat Plain in the 
west. The fomous Calcutta marshes, which occupy a saucer shaped depres- 
sion occur immediately to the west of the Bhangar-Eajarhat Plain. The 
characteristic features of reclamation, however, are clearly visible in the 
plains of Sagar and Eakdwip in the west, and those of Canning and Sandeskhali 
in the east. These reclaimed plains have been cleared of forests and put 
Tuider the plough. * 

The remaining part of the Sundarbans still, awaits development. It 
is heavily forested today, the reserved and protected forests covering an area 
• of about 1,240 square miles, more than one-third of the total area of the 
•district. A number of idands with rather steep edges, which represent the 
southern extension of the delta fisice have not yet been united with the main- 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTBIOT OF 24-PAEaANAS, BENGAL 347 

I 

land. They lie near the mouths of the Hooghly, Matla, and other Sunderban 
rivers. 

The Drainage and Reclamation of the Sundarbans 

The Hooghly and the Ichamati are the two important rivers of the district, 
brming its western and eastern botmdaries respectively. But from the point 
of view of drainage the Hooghly is of very little use, especially in the north, 
as its catchment basin does not lie within this district due to human inter- 
ference. North of Calcutta several important dramage channels had, how- 
ever, been constmoted in the past joining the interior with the Hooghly, but 
their mouths have, in most cases, been almost silted up. The Mathura bil 
in the north which still has some sort of connection with the Hooghly through 
the Bagher Khal illustrates this point. During the time of our visit we found 
it almost dead, and choked with a thiek mantle of water-hyacinth floating 
on it. The same thing had happened to most of the streams which used to 
drain the Amdanga-Sarupnagar and Barasat-Basirhat Plains of 24-Parganas. 
The Sunti Nadi has become a mere shadow of its former size. It flows south- 
ward very sluggishly until it enters into the Bhubanpur marshes. Two other 
streams in this part of 24-Parganas have deteriorated considerably. They 
were named after the two mighty rivers of India — ^the Jumna and Padma, 
which suggest that they must have been once powerful rivers of this district. 
The fleld evidence such as the disproportionate width of the river bed compared 
to the river which flows through it, corroborates the above statement. Both 
of these streams used to flow southwards for a considerable distance before 
joining the Ichamati. In fact the Ichamati below Taki is still known by the 
name of Jamuna, though their confluence lies much higher up today. On 
entering the district it flows sluggishly eastward into the Ichamati, thus 
rendering its former catchment basin completely water-logged. 

The Padma, though equally sluggish, drains a larger area. It flows flrst 
southward, and then in a broad meandering curve tmus northward, joining 
the Ichamati a little below the Jamima confluence. Its former course can be 
traced by connecting a number of alluvial lakes, some of which are locally 
known as Padma bile. 

The silting up of these natural drainage channels has given rise to marsh 
lands in the northern part of the district, and rendered them agriculturally 
unproductive. Moreover, the water-hyacinth, an obnoxious weed interferes 
with the proper utilization of the sluggish streams, marshes and tanks as 
flsheries (see Plates TTTA and VIB). The poor drainage is also responsible 
for the deterioration of the health of the rural population. 

The Ichamati is the only important drainage channel in this portion of 
the district, though unfortunately it lies in the extreme east. Its effective- 
ness as a drainage and navigable channel can be considerably increased by 
straightening this river between Basirhat in south and Chanduna in the 
north. The river meanders between these two places for 40 miles, throwing 


348 . 


B. 0. LAW VOLTJME 



Fio. 2. Tho district of 24-PaTganas showing location of industries and market-places, and principal 
roads and waterways. The location of the thanas of this district has also been shown. 

[Note that the industries are located mainly on the bank of the Hooghly from Calcutta north- 
ward. There are several mills also in the south of Calcutta as far as Budge-Budge. The pattern 
of roads resembles that of railways. The three important east-west waterways are to be noted. 
The Hooghly in the west and the lohamati in the east traverse the .whole length of tho district from 
north to south and are navigable throughout the year. Barasat and Basirhat are the main nodal 
towns in the rural north.] 






LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OF 24-FAEGANAS, BENGAL .349 

a number of ox-bow lakes on its right bank, whereas the straight course will 
hardly be 18 miles. The Balli marshes drain into the Ichamati by means 
of a small dramage channel, wliich was constructed in the latter part of the 
nineteenth century. Of the marshes in this area, the Bariti bil in the west, 
^he Nangla group hits in the middle and the Balli bil in the east form conspi- 
cuous features of the landscape. The deeper parts of these bils were found to 
occupy an area of about 63 scjuare miles, which can be transformed into 
fisheries. The Bhubanpur group of bils, which is partially drained by the 
Harua Gang, occupies an area of another 16 square miles (see Plate IVA). In 
contrast with the northern marshes these contain salt water and are tidal. 

In the northern plains of the Sundarbans the dramage is equally defective. 
It is true that a large number of rivers and canals such as the Harua Gang 
or the Bidyadhari river, the Chaumuha Gang, etc., fiow through the eastern part 
of this region, that is to say, over the Harua and Hasnabad Plains, but their 
beds rise above the surrounding country. They have, consequently, been 
embanked to protect the low-lying cultivated fields from the invasion of salt- 
water which they carry, without making a proper arrangement for draining 
the interior. The eastern part of the region comprising the Plains of Bhangar 
and Bajarhat has no natural, drainage channel excepting the Bidyadhari. 
A number of navigable canals like the Elrishnapur canal, the Bhangar haia 
Ichal, the Bidyadhari khal run through these plains connecting Calcutta with 
its rich eastern hinterland. But none of these can serve as a drainage channel, 
as the level of water in those channels cannot be sufficiently lowered with a 
view to enabling the adjoining areas to be drained into them. Moreover, 
these canals are protected by embankments, about four feet high without 
having sluices, with the result that the natural drainage channels have been 
deprived of their catchment basin, and got silted up. The effect of the Krishna- 
pur canal on the Bidyadhari can be cited as an example. Since the con- 
struction of the canal the river has been deteriorating, so much so that a 
heavy shower of rains in Calcutta invariably fioods the low-lying portions 
of the streets, the excess of water being unable to fiow immediately into the 
Bidyadhari which serves as an outfall channel for the rainwater and sewage 
of the city (Plate lA). 

The three plains, which lie south of Calcutta, that is to say, the Budge- 
Budge-Bishnupur Plain, the Kulpi-Diamond Harbour-Falta Plain, and the 
Baruipur-Jaynagar Plain, are better drained than any other part of 24- 
Parganas. This has been aoliieved not by natural dramage channels, but by 
a number of channels constructed for this purpose. Of these the IMagrahat 
' drainage scheme is the latest venture. The Charial Ichal di’ains a considerable 
part of the Budge-Budge-Bishnupur Plain, entering the Hooghly near Budge- 
Budge. The other plains in this region are drained mainly by the Haora- 
pukur Ichal, Surjyapur hhal and Magra khals, the waters of which enter the 
Hooghly through the main sluice gate of Diamond Harbour. The Hulpi canal 
drains the Kulpi Plain, and joins the Hooghly near Kulpi. Along the eastern 
margin of these Southern Plains nins a dry river bed, which was formerly 



360 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


occupied by the Hooghly. The westward movement of the Hooghly led to 
the water-logging of a considerable portion of these , plains until the artificial 
rtbn.TinftlR mentioned above were excavated. 

The Sunderban area is iutersected by a network of big tidal rivers, the. 
estuaries of wbioh penetrate far inland. Here the rivers fl^ow not in a single 
but in a multitude of anastomozing channels, which under normal 
conditions raise the level of the land through which they fl.ow. Included 
within the coastline of 24-Parganas are the outfalls of the Hooghly with its 
distributary, the Baratola creek; the Saptamulchi; the Thakuran or Jamira; 
the Matla; the Gosaba; the Hariabhanga; and the Eaimangal. These big 
rivers cover an area of about 300 square miles, that is to say, about one- 
quarter of the total surfia,ce of the Sunderbans, but fail to drain properly 
the area through which they flow due to premature reclamation of the lands. 
The Gk)vemment did not foresee the danger of early reclamation of the Sun- 
derban lands, when they were leased out in large blocks to individuals. Since the 
whole of this land was below the high water level of spring tides, the reclamation 
work mainly consisted of the exclusion of tidal salt-waters. The fields were 
enclosed by embankments and the rivers were forced to remain within their 
channels by artificial banks. Even the smallest water inlets were carefully 
confined between high embankments. The inevitable result of this inter- 
ference with the natural channels was the gradual rise of the river beds above 
the general level of the country making the problems of drainage and of the 
maintenance of the embankments more and more difficult. The Matla, for 
example, now lies about 10 ft. above the general level of the surrounding 
low-lands, and may break through the embankments any moment, causing 
a devastating flood. Because of the rise of the thalweg, the depth of this river 
has also decreased considerably within the last fifty years. In some cases — 
the embankments once breached, were not repaired with the result that re- 
claimed arable land again reverted to marshy area. The Payna marsh which 
is partially drained by the Karati or Euriabhanga can be quoted as an 
example7 

To sum up, the greater part of 24-Pargana8 is poorly drained, giving 
rise to marsh lands, though Nature has endowed the district with big rivers 
capable of draming it most efficiently. 

Soila of 24:-Parganas 

The soils of the district are derived mainly &om sands, silts and clays 
deposited by the rivers partly imder water and partly on flood-plains. The 
peat bed, which occurs at a depth ranging between 20 and 30 feet in the 
neighbourhood of Calcutta, whenever comes nearer the surface also contri- 
butes to the formation of certain soils. 

Table I shows the results of mechanical analysis of soil samples taken 
from different localities, and an attempt has been made to prepare a soil map 
based on those data (see Fig. 9). A more detailed study of these soils in the 



Tabkb I 

Mechanical Composition and pK values of certain soils of 24-Parganaa 
(All &actioDa ate expressed as percentages of the air dry soil) 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OF 24-PARGANAS, BENGAL 


351 




362 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


field and laboratory will, however, reveal their true character. On account 
of ingnffiftiRTif. data we could not correlate each of the important crops of this 
district with an optimum pS, value. 

Gtenerally speaking, fine sands or sandy loams predominate in the Northern 
Plains. Such soils contain over 60 per cent of fine sand, from 20 to 40 per cen^ 
of silt and clay, and about 4 per cent of organic matter. The pE. value of these 
soils is 6-5, the lowest in the district. These soils are porous owing to the 
Tiigb percentage of sand, and hence not suitable for aman paddy which needs 
standing water in the field for its proper growth. Such soils are, however, 
quite suitable for growing aus paddy, jute, potatoes and green vegetables. 

The banks of the Hooghly and Ichamati, that is to say, the Upper Hooghly 
Plain in the west and the Ichamati, Basirhat, and Hasnabad Plains in the 
east consist of loams or silt loams. The Southern Plains of the district in 
the neighbourhood of Diamond Harbour, Falta and Magrahat are .also 
composed of these soils. Such soils have a dark grey appearance, and agri- 
culturally are the most important in 24-ParganaB. They contain 60 per cent 
or more of silt, 21 per cent or less of clay, and from 16 to 20 per cent of sand. 
The percentage of organic matter varies considerably, from 3*6 to 9'5. The 
pE value amounts to 7, slightly higher than that of the northern sandy 
plains. On account of the high percentage of silt they are very retentive, 
and can nourish excellent crop of aman paddy. The percentage of organic 
matter in the silts of the Southern Plains is rather low, which indicates that 
these excellent soils could be made to give heavy yields with sufiGlcient appli- 
cation of animal and other manures. The old bed of the Ganges in the Southern 
Plains contains a slightly different type of soil, the percentage of clay being 
higher than that of silt, and having also equal proportions of sand and clay. 
The value of this soil is the highest in the district. There are smaller 
patches of clay loam in the other silted up river beds. 

East of the Southern Plains occurs a big patch of typical clay loams, 
especially along the banks of the Matla. These contain about 30 per cent 
of clay and 44 per cent of silt. The percentage of sand is somewhat lower. 
The pE value is considerably low, perhaps due to the prevalence of marsh 
lands. 

Clay soils predominate in the marshy low-lying Plains of Bhangar and 
Harua, adjoining Calcutta, and near the mouth of the Hooghly in the neigh- 
bourhood of Kakdwip. These soils contain 30 to 50 per cent of clay, and 25 
per cent of fine sand. On account of the high percentage of clay they tend 
to become sticky when wet and hard when dry. They cause water-logging 
of the land, thereby hampering agricultural operations. In the Bhangar 
and Harua Plains there are also patches of clay loam. The soils in the northern 
fringe of the Sundarbans are usually alkaline due to the infiltration of salt- 
water through the porous mud embankments. 

In the undeveloped portion of the Simdarbans sandy soils predominate 
along the edges of the newly formed islands, and are almost incapable of 
growing crops. 


353 


LAND UTILIZATI9n‘iN THE DISTEICT OF 24-PARGANAS, BENGAL 

in. Cmmatio Influence on Land Utilization 
Agricultural Calendar 

Owing to its location at the head of the Bay of Bengal the district of 
^4-Parganas receives the full force of the S.W. monsoon. The climatic changes 
within the district, however small, exert some influence on the distribution 
of crops, but unfortunately a precise account of the variations of climate 
cannot be given for want of sufficient meteorological data. There are only 
two full-fledged meteorological stations, one at Alipore (Calcutta), the head- 
quarters of the district (class I type), and the other at the Sagar island near 
the mouth of the Hooghly (class II type). Besides Calcutta and Sagar there 
are eight rainfall recording stations.^ The year in this district as elsewhere 
in Bengal is divided into four seasons based on temperature, rainfeU, and 
atmospheric disturbances, a very mild dry winter, which hardly lasts for three 
months — ^December, January and February; an early summer with moderate 
rainfall and high temperature lasting from March to May; a late summer with 
heavy rainfeU and high temperature, known as the rainy season, lasts from 
June to September; and a flue autumn with some rainfeU preva iling in the 
two months — October and November (see Fig. 3). 



Fia. 3. ' Seasonal Distribution of 
Temperature and Rainfall, and 
Prevailing Directions of the 
Winds. 

W — Winter. 

S — Summer. 

R — ^Rainy. 

A — Autumn. 


The activities of the fermers of 24-Parganas foUow the cycUc order of 
these four seasons. Aman (winter paddy), aus (summer and autumn paddy) 
and jute are the three important crops of this district. Of these, aman is 
by far the most important. For grooving it, the cultivators spend their early 
summer montlis (Chaitra and Baisakh)^ in manuring their flelds, and then 

1 Of these three ore situated in the Upper Hooghly Plain (Barraokpore, Dum Dum and 
Budge-Budge), two in the Barasat-Basirhat Plains (Barasat and Basirliat), two in the Sundarbans 
(Gosaba and Port Canning), and one in the Southern Plains (Diamond Bhrbour). 

s Those are names of months according to Bengali calendar. For their English equivalents 
see Fig. 4. 




354 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


wait for rains to come. They start ploughing with the first rains when the 
ground is softened and continue it at least for three times right in the midst 
of the rainy season. Harrowing, weeding and transplanting of seedlings are 
also done in the rainy season. Thus this is the busiest season for the farmers. 
Autumn is the slack season for thein. The harvest starts in Agrahayan andf 
continues for another month, when the farmers are busy again. They get 
another respite after the harvest, when threshing and other in-door work 
keep them engaged. 

Those who grow aus paddy, which is harvested in the rainy season, 
plough their land immediately before and after the harvest of aman paddy, 
when the soil remains moist. Manuring, another ploughing, harrowing and 
finally broadcasting of seeds take place in early summer. For growing jute, 
the early summer months are also the busiest time, though harvest of this 



'Bxa. 4. Agricultural Calendar of 24.Parganas and Monthly Distribution of Bainfall. 


For Main Crops : — 
P — ^Ploughing. 
M — 'Manuring. 

For Pulses : — 


TBi — Tran^lanting. 
H — Harrowing. 

Br — ^Broadca^ing. 


W — 'Weeding. 
HR — 'Harvesting. 


H — Harvest of Musuri. 
K — Harvest of EZhesari. 

Bengali months : — 


Br — ^Broadcasting of Musuri in Aswin. 

Br — 'Broadcasting of Hhesari in Agrahayan when Aman 
paddy is ripe. 


(1) Baisakh — ^mid-April to mid-May. (2) Jaisffia — ^mid-May to mid-June. (3) ALflAor— mid- 
June to nud-July. (4) SraeuTi— mid- July to mid- August. (6) BAadra— mid-August to mid- 
September. (6) Aetoin— mid-September to mid-October. (7) Borticfc— mid-October to mid- 
November. (8) AjrroAayan— mid-November to mid-December. (9) Poks— mid-December to 
mid-January. (10) MaffA--mid-Jant^^^ to ^d-Pebruary. (11) Paipoon-mid-Pebruary to 
(12) Ohattra — 'imd-March to mid-April. ^ 


mid-March. 



LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTBIOT OF 24-PAEaANAS, BENGAL 


366 


crop occurs in the rainy season. The musuri is usually grown in rotation with 
aus paddy. It is sown broadcast in autumn (Aswin), and harvested in winter 
(Magh). The khesari is sown broadcast in an aman land in winter when the 
.paddy is ripe (Agrahayan) and harvested in winter (Magh and Falgoon). The 
^iinate, therefore, determines the nature of the activities of the farmers of 
24-Parganas (see Kg. 4). Let us study in some detail the elements of climate 
of this district. 

Temperature 

Temperature is one of the most important elements of the climate of a 
region. Its influence on plant life is considerable. The average winter 
temperature in 24-Parganas is 68'2°F., but along the coast it is slightly higher, 
69-4“P. The average early summer temperature is 83*9°P. and it is slightly 
lower along the coast. In the late summer or the rainy season average 
temperature remains the same or even increases slightly in the coastal areas. 
With the advent of autumn the temperature decreases, the average ranging 
between 77‘6“P. and 78’1°P. Since none of the seasonal temperatures falls 
below 68®P., plants are never deprived of heat, without which they cannot 
thrive. 

Table II shows the annual march of significant temperatures in the two 
stations. Those relating to Calcutta (Alipore) have also been shown graphi- 
cally in Kg. 6. In the annual march of temperature there are two maxima, 



Fio. 6. Annual March of Significant Temperatures at 
Calcutta (Alipore). 


one in April or May, and a subsidiary maximum in September, and one 
minimnin iu January. In 24-Parganas the warmest month therefore is 
April, except along the coast, where because of the marine influence, it is 



Tabi-e II 


356 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 



Calcutta (Aliporo) 



LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTEICT OE 24-PABGANAS, BENGAL 357 

May; and the coldest month is January. The monthly TnaviTnnm tem- 
peratures rise to 90°F. or more in at least four mouths every year in inland 
areas, and range between 77°F. and 96'3°F. The temperatures in the two 
typical winter months, December and January, remain about the same, 
^9°F. (Calcutta) and 77°F. (Sagar). It is mteresting to note that the monthly 
maximum temperature increases in September with the decrease of rainfall. 

The highest monthly temperatures recorded in 1938 showed the same 
trend, with the difference that the highest temperature in May was consi- 
derably lower than that of April, which had recorded an rmusually high 
temperature, 107°F. that year. 

The monthly minimum air temperatures range between 64*1°F. and 78*3®F. 
in Calcutta, and between 68*7°F. and 81*1°F. at Sagar. The monthly TniniTmim 
temperatures remain below 60°F. in the three winter months, and near about 
78°F. for five months fi:om May to September, during the growing season of 
aman paddy. The absolute lowest temperatures for 1938 were not far below 
the monthly mim'mum temperatures. Li the rainy season the lowest tem- 
peratures did not fall below 77®F. The average monthly temperatures show 
an annual range of about 20°F. 

Wind and Storm 

Wind is a great benefactor of plants, as by bringing moisture firom the 
oceans and other large bodies of water it keeps them alive. The normal 
directions of the surface winds in 24-Parganas are shown in Fig. 3. In 
winter winds from some northerly point are most frequent, but in summer the 
prevafiing direction is south-westerly. The prevailing direction in the year 
as a whole is southerly or south-westerly. Since the Indian Ocean and the 
Bay of Bengal lie in that direction there is copious rainfall in the district. 

The aimual march of wind velocity shows the minimum in winter, and 
with the advent of summer the velocity increases, the maximum occurring 
in April. The velocity of winds in coastal areas is considerably higher, in 
at least five months a year, ranging between 10 and 16 miles per hour. On 
over 100 occasions the velocity of winds dropped to nil in inland areas, whereas 
such calms prevailed only on 12 occasions in the coastal areas (see Fig. 3). 

tabi^ m 

Annual March of Wind Velocity 

Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jim. Jul. Ang. Sept. Got. Nov. Dec. 

. . 2 2-6 3-6 5 6 4-3 3-8 3-6 2-9 2-1 1-9 1-9 

,. 6-2 6-3 9-3 16 12-6 11-6 14-6 14-2 7-9 6-6 6-1 6-2 

The daily march of wind velocity also shows some interestiug features.^ 
In winter months when the monthly velocity is the minimum the hourly 
velocity remains below 1 mile for over 12 hours fr’om 6 p.m. in the evening to 
7 a.m. in the following mommg, and then the velocity begins to increase 


Stations 
Calcutta 
Sagar .. 


1 India Weather Review, 1938, Table VUI. 


358 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


until the ynnyiTTniTYi is reached between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., about 4 miles per 
hour. In the next hour the velocity decreases to 3 miles, and remains as such 
till 4 p.m. In April, the hottest month of the year, when the monthly velocity 
of winds is also the maximum, the maximum hourly velocity also occurs 
between 10 a.m. and II a.m., 7 miles per hour. In the next hour the velocity^ 
decreases to 6 miles, and remains as such till 6 p.m. The velocity is 6 miles 
per hour from 6 p.m. to the midnight, and then begins to decrease steadily 
till 6 a.m. in the morning. 

As rainfeU during the early summer results largely from Nor’westers, 
these local atmospheric disturbances are of great importance agriculturally. 
The Nor’westers, locally known as Kal-Baisakhi, are sudden storms gathering 
in the evening from mid-April to mid-June which may be little more than 
thundershowers, but are sometimes little less than cyclones.^ 

Sunshine 

The amount of sunshine never decreases to such an extent as to affect 
the life of plants. The number of days with over 6 hours of bright sunshine 
is the minimum in July, 7 days, and the maximum in December, 31 days. 
Not for a single day in March and April the duration of bright sunshine falls 
below 6 hours in moat years. 

Bainfall 

It has already been pointed out that the agricultural life in 24-Parganas 
is regulated to a large extent by the amoimt and the seasonal distribution 
of rainfall. The Bay of Bengal branch of S.W. monsoon is mainly res- 
ponsible for heavy rains in summer. It is augmented by depressions 
and cyclonic storms which originate in the Bay of Bengal and blow over the 
district. 

Though the S.W. monsoon is usually expected to arrive by the middle 
of June, the date of arrival varies considerably in the individual years. In 
Calcutta the monsoon burst in the first week in 1941, in the second week in 
1939 and 1940, and in the third week m 1942, though the heaviest rainfall 
during 24 hours always occurred between 16th and 22nd of that month (see 
Kg. 6). The other parts of the district also receive the first monsoonal rains 
on different days. In 1939 the monsoon burst in the Sagar island on the 
11th with a downpour of 2 inches, and on the next three or four days there 
was much smaller rainfall, hardly exceeding 0*5 inch on any single day. It 
was clearly a cyclonic rain, bright and dry days preceding the arrival of the 
cyclonic wind. Further north in the Diamond Harbour Plain the monsoon 
burst one day earlier, and heavy rainfeli continued for another two days, the 
total amount being 4 inches. UnlUto in the coastal tract, there were drizzles 
for three or four days before the arrival of the monsoon. The distribution 


1 Nor’-westors of Bengal, by S. B. C!hatterjoo, Cal. Oeo. Review, March 1944. 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 


359 



Fig. 6. Arrival of S.W. Monsoon in June. [Heaviest rainfall is recorded after the 

middle of the month.] 


of the rainfall throughout the year in different parts of the district is shoTm 
in Table IV. Based on the average annual rainfall distribution a sketch 
map has also been prepared (see Fig. 8), The greater part of the district lies 
between 60 and 80 inches isohyetal lines. 

Table IV shows the average monthly rainfall in the stations situated in 
different regions. 

In the Upper Hooghly Plain the average annual rainfeU increases from 
north to south, by some 10 inohes. But in winter and early summer the 
northern part receives slightly more rain than the central and southern. 
In the three typical monsoonal months, June, July and August, the average 
monthly rainfall is over 10 inches, whereas in November, December and 
January it is less than an inch. In September the rainfall is somewhat lower 
than that of the preceding month, but by October it has considerably de- 
creased. In February and March,, the average monthly rainfall is between 




360 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


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1 Averftgo for 1939 and 1940 only. 



LAND DTHiIZATrON IN THE DISTRICT OR 24-PARGANAS, BENGAL 


361 


1 and 2 inches everywhere. There is fijrther increase in April, little over 

2 inches. In May the rainfall has more than doubled. 

The average annual rainfall in the Barasat-Basirhat Plains ranges be- 
tween 69 and 64 inches, the eastern side in the Ichamati valley receiving more 
♦rains than the western portion. Here the average monthly rainfell shows 
the same trend as in the Upper Hooghly Plain. 

In the Southern Plains the average annual rainfall is stiU higher, 67-44 
inches. There is a higher rainfall in each of the monsoonal months, the 
precipitation in winter (December) and in the hottest month (April) being, 
however, less than that of the Upper Hooghly Plain and Barasat-Basirhat 
Plains. 

The liighest rainfall is received in the coastal areas of the Sunderbans, 
where four months have the average monthly rain&U of over 10 inches. But 
as in the Southern Plains the rainfall in April is considerably lower. 

Figure 7 shows the daily distribution of rainfall in the crop-growing 
season for two years, 1939 and 1940. A sharp variation in the amount of 



Fig. 7. Doily Distribution of Bainfall in the crop-growing season. 


rainfall from day to day is the most characteristic feature. It is seldom 
that heavy showers continue for more than a day. There was, however, 
one exception in 1939, when heavy showers continued for ten days without 
a break from July 26 to August 4, the heaviest (over 4 inches) occurring on 
the last da 3 ^ For the next ten days there was very little rainfiill. The pre- 
cipitation in the year of deficient rainfall, especially if the monsoon arrives 
late, tends to occur in heavier showers in the latter part of the rainy season. 

This type of rainfall with heavy showers alternating with rainless days, 
though helpful for ploughing fields and transplanting paddy seedlings, tends 



362 


B. C. IiAW VOLTJME 


to water-log the land, maldng the drainage problem very difficult. Moreover, 
the problem of soil erosion also needs solution. 

EumidiUf 

The humidity of the atmosphere is another climatic element that lias a-4' 
direct relation to plant life. It is the relative humidity that determines 
whether the climate of a place is physically moist or dry. 

Table V 

TAe Annml March, of the Rdative Humidity of the Atmosphere in Zi-Farganas 
Statioos Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Deo, 

Calcutta . . S9 84 81 79 78 84 87 88 87 86 82 83 

Ssgar .. .. 90 86 83 81 81 84 87 89 87 85 85 87 

The mean monthly values of relative humidity as shown in Table V indicate 

that April and May are the driest months in 24-Parganas. With the advent 

of the rainy season the relative humidity increases considerably. It again 
decreases after the cessation or a coimiderable decrease of rainfall in October, 
thus relieving the inhabitants of the district from the oppressive heat. 

IV. The Pebsstob of Population on Land 

24-Parganas ranlm fourth in population among the districts of Bengal, 
but in area it is only the seventh largest district. The population of the 



Fig. 8. Aimusvl Distribution, of 3Elavafall. 


(Note that aus paddy is groim mainly 
in the noribetn part, vrhote rainfaU is 
de&cient.) 






363 


land utilization in the district of 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 

district as recorded in 1941 census was 3,636,386. With this to be added the 
population of the city- of Calcutta, 2,108,891, which will bring out the true 
intensity of the pressure of population on land. The total area of the district 
including that of Calcutta is about 3,730 sq. miles. Then the density of 
'^population comes out to be o'Fer 1,500 per sq. mile. Por an agricultural 
area, where about 60 per cent of the working population earn their living 
directly &om the soil, this density is undoubtedly very high and is primarily 
responsible for lowering the standard of living of the majority of population. 
The growth of population in this district was found to be more rapid than 
that of Bengal as a whole in every census year, which may be taken to mean 
that conditions have had been more favourable for agriculture and manufac- 
turing in 24-Parganas than most of the other districts of Bengal (Table VI). 

TAS£E VI 

The Growth of Population in 24-Parganas and Calcutta as compared to that of Bengal as a whole 

Total Percentage of increase 

Population 

1941 1931-41 1921-31 1911-21 1901-11 1891-1901 1881-91 


Bengal , . 

. . 61,460.377 

20-3 

7-3 

2-7 

7-9 

7-7 

7-5 

24>Pargana8 

3,636,386 

28*7 

10-3 

7-4 

15-5 

9-6 

140 

Calcutta . . 

2,108,891 

81-2 

11-2 

3-2 

9-9 

23-8 

6-4 


Since 1921 the rate of growth of population in the city of Calcutta was higher 
than that of the district as a whole. In the earlier decades between 1891 
and 1901 a similar higher rate of gro'wth was noticeable in the city. 



under the Plough. (Percentages of crops square mile of cultivated area, 

in the total are of each thana.) 




’364 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


Figure 1 shows the distribution of population in the district. There are 
three zfnes of dense population. Of these the one along the bank of the 
Hooghly from Halisahar to Budge-Budge is the densest. It contains about 
one-Ld of the total population of the district, excludmg the popuktion 
of Calcutta. If we include the population of the city, this zone wiU be forad 
to contain over 66 per cent of the total population. This extreme concentra- 
tion of population in the Upper Hooghly Plain is due to the emphasis on manu- 
facturing and trade. The density of population is over 4,000 per square mile. 


24-PARGANAS 


p i i 





■ 



illllllillllllllBB 

y 



1 








Fio. 12. Acreage for Holding. 



yet brought under the Plough. (Percent- 
ages of total area in each thana.) 


The second zone of dense population occurs south of Calcutta in the 
Southern Plains. It covers an area of about 800 sq. miles and is roughly circular 
in outline. This area contains about one-quarter of the total population of 
the district, the density of population per square mile being 1,600. The 
third zone with a density little over 1,000 extends from west to east between 
the Hooghly and lehamati rivers covering the whole of the Barasat-Basirhat 
Plains. It contains another one-tenth of the total population. Of the 
thinly populated areas, the Plains of Amdanga-Sarupnagar contain about 
700 persons per square mile. The reclaimed belt of the Sundarbans bor- 
dering the forested area, and extending from south-west to north-east, contains 
some 20 per cent of the population, though the density is the lowest. The 
area lying further north which was reclaimed earlier contains more dense 
population. The Sundarban forest proper occupies the south-eastern part 
of the district, and covers an area of over 1,000 sq. miles. The whole of these 
forests has been reserved and protected by Grovernment, and hence no human 
settlement could grow there," 






LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OE 24-PARGANAS, BENGAL 


866 


The settlement patterns indicate the nature of land utilization. The 
linear pattern is very much pronounced along the banlc of the Hooghly, 
where truck gardening is the main agricultural pursuit. A similar linear 
• arrangement in the Baruipur-Jaynagar Plain is noticeable from Calcutta 
/^southward. The settlement here grew on the banks of the Hooghly, which 
was flowing then through this region. This area sends large quantities of 
vegetables and fruits to Calcutta markets. Further east in the agricultural 
zone proper the bulk of the population is found in large compact villages, 
spaced evenly all over the area. Even here the linear arrangement persists 
in some parts. In the reclaimed Sundarbans especially bordering the forests 
the population is very much dispersed, where compact villages have not yet • 
been formed. 

In the northern part of the district the population is somewhat scattered, 
though the general tendency is to keep to the linear pattern. 

V. HlANinrAOTUBiNG, Trade and Transport in relation to Land 

Utilization 

Manufacturing 

TABI.& VD 

Degree 0 / Industrialuation in 24-Parganas 


Typo. 

Number of mills 
Bengal 24-Parganas 

Number of workers 
Bengal 24-Parganas 

Percentage 
of total 
workers 

Important Industries — 

Jute Mills including jute 
presses . . . . 

129 

80 

307,306 

186,041 

60 

Cotton hlillB including 
cotton presses and 
hosieries 

71 

27 

32,716 

12,069 

37 

Paper IVIills including 
paper pulp industry 

4 

3 

6,017 

4,161 

70 

Agricultural Industries — 

Rico Alills 

361 

116 

16,600 

6,091 

36 

Flour Mills 

10 

6 

1,617 

619 

40 

Sugar Itlills 

11 

1 

3,184 

120 

4 

Oil Mills including 

presses . . 

30 

6 

2,000 

497 

20 

Bakeries . . 

0 

6 

1,066 

1,031 

99 

Industries using animal produets as raw materials — 

Silk Factories . . '6 6 

1,175 

1,118 

95 

Lac Factories 

6 

6 

892 

892 

100 ■ 

♦Leather and Shoo 
Factories 

2 

1 

2,913 

120 

3 

Tanneries . . 

6 

6 

618 

618 

100 

Comb 

3 

1 

176 

76 

43 ■ 


* Tliis does not include the Bata Shoe Factory, which is located in 24-Parganas and is the 
largest of its Idnd in India. 



366 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


Tabi>b Vn — continued 


Type 

Number of mills 
Bengal 24-Porgana3 

Number of workers ^^ftotaf * 

Bengal 24-Parganas “ 

Industries that need considerable expansion— 
Match Footories . . 13 

10 

4,835 

4,076 

96 

Rubber Factories 

IG 

12 

0,535 

6,096 

S3 

Soap Factories 

11 

10 

955 

837 

88 

Glass Factories 

16 

8 

2,371 

1,370 

50 

Tobacco Factories 

2 

2 

1,269 

1,269 

100 

Chemical Factories 

15 

11 

3,545 

3,000 

84 

Bone and Manuring Mills 

7 

5 

1,720 

719 

41 

Point Factories 

7 

5 

1,424 

635 

43 

Potteries Factories 

9 

4 

2,396 

898 

35 

Indtistries consuming raw iron and steel — 
Railway workshop . . 25 

5 

26,285 

5,104 

19 

Ordnance Factories 

3 

3 

6,197 

6,197 

100 

Telegraphic workshops 

1 

1 

1,111 

1,111 

100 

Steam boat building and 
dockyard engineering 
works . . 

14 

5 

14,897 

8,327 

56 

General en^eeting in- 
cluding electrical work- 
shops 

174 

77 

26,623 

12,444 

46 

Steel Rolling Mills 

6 

2 

16,906 

258 

1 

Lead Rolling Mills 

1 

1 

183 

183 

100 

Tramway workshops . . 

2 

1 

945 

854 

90 

Coach building and 
motor-car repairing. . 

17 

17 

1,879 

1,879 

100 

Mettd stomping 

7 

4 

1,377 

910 

66 

Kerosene turning and 
packing . . 

11 

9 

2,485 

2,211 

88 

Carpentry and cement 
manufacturing . . 

9 

7 

799 

655 

82 

Others 

6 

4 

820 

556 

67 

Industries of public utility — 

Electrical generating 
and transforming 

stations . . 9 

4 

2,456 

1,569 

63 

Gasworks.. 

6 

3 

708 

621 

87 

Wafer pumping stations 

6 

4 

1,440 

1,321 

92 

Gramophone 

1 

1 

820 

820 

100 

Mint 

1 

1 

887 

887 

100 

Laundries 

7 

4 

420 

293 

69 

Printing and book- 
binding 

99 

85 

9,907 

8,850 

89 

Table VII shows a 

very high degree of conceutratiou of the 

industries of 


Bengal in 24-PaTganas. The extreme localization of such industries along the 
river bank is shown in !Figure 2. A detailed account of their distribution 
within this region will be given later. Jute manufacturing is the most im- 
portant. About 60 per cent of the jute mills of Bengal are located in the 
district. This industry alone employs more than one-half of the total factory 
workers of the district, the average number of daily workers per mill being 
over 3,000. Cotton manufacturing ranks second, though, it employs less than 



LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OE 24-rARaANAS, BENOAL 367 

oiio-tonth of tho uumbor of juto mill workers. The cotton mills of tliis district 
nro of rocont growth, nud need much ox^iansion. It servos as a good example 
of an industry that has been kept deliberately in the background despite 
tho demand of homo market, availability of cheap fuel, tho long experience 
“^of a section of tho population in tho art of weaving cotton cloth. Sillc manu- 
facturing has been neglected as well. There are only two mills, employing 
just over 1,000 workers. Tho first paper mill was established as early as 
1S82, tho progress of tliis industiy has had been rather slow. The two paper 
mills in tho district employ some 5,000 workers. Chemical, match and glass 
industries got a start during tho last war period, and are developing rapidly 
in tho x^Hisent war-timo. There are no iron and stool meltmg works in 
tho district, though quite a number of engineering works consume large 
quantities of iron and steel. 



Fio. 14. Distribution of Unproductivo 
Land. 

[Percentages of total area in each thnna.] 



Land. 

[Forcontoges of Not Cropped area.] 


Of the industries preparing agricultural products for food, rice mills 
are by far tho most important. Since most of them occur in the neighbour- 
hood of Calcutta, there are very few mills in tho rural areas where they are 
most needed. In any industrial ifianning in future, this point should be taken 
into account. Since tho majority of the population of the district eat rice 
as their staple food, not many flour mills are to be found in this district. The 
oil mills of tho district mainly extract oil from mustard seeds, whieh is used 
as a substitute for butter or ghee. The tobacco industry is also fairly deve- 
loped in this district, employing over 1,000 workers per day. 

Of tho public utility services run on factory linos the four water pumping 
stations of this district including tho largest water works at Palta, the three 






368 


B. 0. LAW VOLtTME 


™ works, including the tegest in India, the Oriental Gas Works, and the 
four power stations of the Bleotrio Supply Corporation cater for the populaton 
of Calcutta and its satellite toivns. 



Fia. 16. Production of 4flton Poddy jpcr Pio, if. Production of Aits Faddy per 


capita. capita. 


Since the manufacturing industries mainly concern with the processing 
of agricultural products, and claim not much more than 20 per cent of the 
total working population, the pressure of population on the agricultural land 
of the district has not appreciably diminished. Moreover, the extent to which 
these industries are localized in one part of the district, could not possibly 
relieve the pressure of population from the greater part of the district. 


Trade 

The percentage of the total working population engaged in trade is also 
extremely low, about 6. Most of the industrial towns are trade centres as 
well, Calcutta surpassing all of them in the volume and amoimt of trade that 
it handles. Figure 2 also shows the location of the important centres including 
village markets and annual fairs in the rural areas. The important trade 
centres outside the Upper Hooghly Plain are located either at a meeting 
place of a number of roads, as at Barasat, or at the terminus of an important 
road, as at Taki, or where different means of transport, roads, railways and 
water-ways meet each other, as at Basirhat. The navigable canals have also 
provided sites for the growth of trade centres such as Bhangar. In the 
Southern Plains the main trade centres are located either along an important 
road, or on the river bank. The smaller markets, loiown locally as hats, are 
dotted all over the coimtry, mainly along river banks, roads and railways. 
These fimction twice a week on certain fixed days. 







369 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTBIOT OF 24-TAKGANAS, BENGAL 
Transport 

Transport facilities in this district leave much to be desired. Kgure 1 
shows the pattern of railways wliich radiate out from the city of Calcutta, 
^he main section running north of Calcutta in the Upper Hooghly Plain was 
opened first as early as 1862. It connects most of the important towns of 
the district, thus serving only the urban population. There are no feeder 
raflways to this important section. The central section of the Bengal- 
Assam Railway, which runs northeast from Calcutta, connects some of the 
towns of lesser importance situated in rural areas. A railroad of a much 
smaller gauge (2' 6") runs through the Barasat-Basirhat Plains, connecting 
Calcutta with rich agricultural lands in the east. The total mfieage of rail- 
roads operating north of Calcutta is some 130 miles, that is to say, only one- 
half of a mile of railroad per square mile of area. South of Calcutta all the 
railways excepting one turn westwards, serving roughly an area of 800 square 
miles, and lying mainly in the southern agricultmal plains. The railroad 
between Port Canning and Calcutta is the second-oldest, and that between 
Calcutta and Diamond Harbour, the tlurd-oldest in Bengal. They were 
opened in the latter part of the last century, when the port of Calcutta was 
in danger of being closed down due to silting of the bed of the Hooghly. The 
total mileage of railroads including the narrow-gauge Kalighat-Palta line 
comes to about the same as in the north, though serving a much larger area. 



Fia. 18. Distribution of Jute Land. 19- Distribution of Ploughs (per 

[Percentages of total area in each thana.j 1,000 acres). 


The pattern of metalled roads more or less resembles that of railways 
(see Pig. 2). Thus practically the same area is served both by roads and 
railways. There are just over 400 miles of metalled roads, and another. 300 
miles of unmetalled roads, the latter getting dusty in winter n.nd muddy in 
24 




870 


B. O. LA.W VOLBMK 


the rainy season. Of the metaUed roads which do not run paraUel to rail- 
roads two in the north, the Krishnanagar road and the Mathurapur road, 
and one in the south, the Baruipur-Matla road, carry large traffic. 



I^G. 20. Distribution of Caxts. Fio. 21. Distribution of Boats. 

(Per 1,000 acres.) (Per 1,000 acres.) 


In the absence of railways and good roads the agricultural and forest 
products of the southern and eastern parts of the district can be brought 
to Calcutta and other industrial towns only by water. There are three 
important water-ways connecting Calcutta with these parts of the district 
and beyond. The northern route is known as the Inner Sundarban Passage, 
the central one is known as the Outer Sundarban Passage, The southern 
route connects Calcutta with Assam through the Simdarbans proper and is 
frequented only by large steamers. To sum up, rapid laud transport is not 
available, except in the urban and highly developed agricultural zones. 
This stands in the way of proper utilization of land of this district. The 
proximity of this district to Calcutta gives it a greater advantage over any 
other district of Bengal by providing a huge market for its agricultural 
products, provided such products, especially perishable commodities like 
vegetables, fruits and flowers, could be transported quick from producing 
areas to consuming towns. 

VI. The Na-turb op Land Utilization and Ageioultubal 

Equipment 

LaTid Utilization 

Table VIII gives some indication of the utilization of the district from 1930 
to 1942. It is seldom realized that forests in this district occupy larger area 
than arable land. The percentage of its land area under the plough to the 
total area of the district is rather low, hardly 30, whereas forests occupy about 
one-third of the total land surface. Even if we exclude the forested area in 

24B 





LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTEIOT OF 24-PABGANAS, BENGAL 


371: 


•the Sundarbans from the total area of the district, the percentage of the net 
area sown does not rise much above 40. This low percentage of land in use 
accounts for the heavy shortage of foods when normal trade is hampered. 
The industries, howsoever concentrated in this district, are not so developed 
^as to compensate the neglect of agricultural land. It is true that the acreage 
under the plough somewhat increased during the decade 1930-39, but the 
decline in acreage during 1940-41 was something serious, especially when 
some 300,000 acres of land were added to this district. The shortage of 
agricultural labour was perhaps responsible for the decline. 


Table vttt 

Land Utilization in 24-Pargana8 
(Areas in acres) 





Arable land 

Marsb 
land, etc. 

Yeor 

Total 

Forests 




Cultivable 

Agricul- 

turally 

unpro- 

ductive 


area 


Net 

area 

sown. 

Twice- 

cropped 

area 

Current 

fallows 

but not 
cultivated 
(culturable 
waste) 

1030 s 



1,089,616 

•) 

730,800 

01,300 

386,148 

■) 


1031 



738,600 

126,300 

349,726 

[ 328,731 

1 

1032 



^ 1,118,238 

779,300 

133,200 

131,409 

307,826 

J 

S 672,645 

1033 



780,400 

307,826 

307,826 

1934 

1035 


3,107,840 

1 1,047,221 

797.900 

773.900 

137.400 

136.400 

331.343 

355.343 

X 358,731 

1 

1036 


■) 

764,300 

116,200 

369,030 

358,531 

572,890 

1037 



V 1,043,089 

780,400 

114,600 

353,010 

1 358,661 

1938 



821,300 

113,000 

312,110 


1030) 



^ 1,043,000 

'925,000 

119,100 

208,400 


672,680 

1040' 



910,600 

112,600 

223,175 

[• 631,840 

1941 

► 

3,381,010 

1 1,042,816 

910,400 

106,400 

223.275 


1942^ 


973,600 

116,695 

160,176 

3 

/ 



Food grains 

Cash crops 

Year 

Rice 

Pulses 

and 

other 

food 

grains 

Jute 

Oil-seeds 

Spices 

Sugar-cane 

Fruits 

and 

vege- 

tables 

1930 

691,100 

29,300 

08,000 

1,700 

3,100 

1,900 

16,800 

1931 

731,200 

28,100 

69,000 

1,800 

3,100 

2,000 

18,600 

*) 

1932 

803,400 


45,000 

\ 



1933 

1934 

805,600 

810,100 

C 27,700 

42.000 

61.000 

> 2,000 

C 3,100 

V 2,600 

1 18,400 

1035 

789,200 

3 

57,100 


3 

2,700 

^ 18,600 

1936 

785,200 

16,400 

46,000 

/ 

2,300 

\ 2,800 

17,600 

1937 

795,200 

16,000 

53,000 

1,900 

2,800 

17,000 

1938 

834,900 

1 21,200 

45,000 

1 1,600 


2,700 

18,700 

1939 

949,400 

40,000 

\ 

3,200 

18,700 

1940 

1941 

941.000 

919.000 

1 20,900 

30.000 

46.000 

1 1,600 

S 2,400 

] 2,500 

18,400 

18,200 

1942 

1,012,800 

21,100 

24,895 

1,400 

/ 

2,600 

18,600 



372 


B. 0, LAW VOLUME 


In a densely populated agricultural country, where arable land is res- 
tricted in area, multiple cropping and intertillage should be practised. But 
in district the acreage under more than one crop is rather small, occupying 
hardly more than one-tenth of the net cropped area. For the first five or 
six years during the period under consideration the acreage yielding more thatf 
one crop a year increased steadily, but from 1935 to 1940 it showed a decline. 
The twice-cropped area was less in 1942 than what it was ten years back in 
1931. 



Fro. 22. Density of Cattle per square Fro. 23. Density of Sheep and Goats 

mile. per square mile. 


The area classed as current fallow accounted for 160,176 acres in 1942, 
i.e. 16 per cent of the net cropped area. In the previous year it was much 
higher, 26 per cent. The highest acreage of cxuxent fallow was, however, 
recorded in 1930, 63 per cent of the net cultivated land. During the time of 
the last settlement operations of the district the percentage was as low as 4, 
though an upward trend was then noticed.^ Land is kept fallow for preventing 
soil exhaustion and its ultimate destruction, unless land is refreshed every 
year by natural or artificial means. In England the practice of fallowing was 
abandoned when there was a greater demand for food in the beginning of the 
eighteenth century by adopting a rotation system and manuring the cultivated 
fields heavily. Since in this part of the country rivers are not depositing 
fertilizing silts in their flood plains, and the poverty of peasants is preventing 
them fi:om using artificial manures on a large scale, it is necessary to keep 
a certain percentage of the land fallow, but certainly not to the extent it was 
kept fallow in 1933. The increase in fallow land in 24-Parganas was found 

^ Final Beporfc on the Survey and Settlement Operations in the District of 24-Parganas, 
1924r-33, page 32. 





373 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTEICT OF 24-PARaANAS, BENGAL 

partiy due to the neglect of mud embankments, which when gave way allowed 
salt-water to enter into the fields, thus making it useless for growing crops 
any longer. The big drop in the fallow land area in 1942 may be due to the 
reclamation of those inundated areas as a direct result of the ‘Grow more food 
» campaign’ of Government. But a more vigorous policy is needed to solve 
this problem. 



Tia. 24. Growth of Towns in the Upper 
Hooghly Main. 


3^000 










Boot 


♦too 







p. MYNtSM. 


eemmxHM , 

r / * 

▼AW yy '*^i*** 



£,■■1 I 1 1_J L_L 


I07Z IRI l»l 1001 III! lOZI 1111 1041 

Fio. 26. Growth of Towns in the Agricultural 
Plains. 


The arable area, which was not brought imder the plough firom 1939 
to 1942, amounted to 631,840 acres, that is to say, about 66 per cent of the net 
cropped area. Part of it, about one-third, contains groves of various kinds. 
The remaining portion is simply kept fellow. An attempt should be made 
to utilize this land. Before 1939 the area shown as culturable but not cul- 
tivated in official statistics was much less. In one year (1932) it was less 
than one-half, of the present area. This shows that it will not be so difficult 
to bring back the land under the plough which was once cultivated. 

The unproductive area also takes up a large proportion of our land. Prom 
1930 to 1942 the acreage ranged between 572,645 and 572,680, the percentage 
of the net cropped area in the total area being about 60 in 1942. Not much 
of it is taken by homesteads, about one-fifth. It is, therefore, possible to 
reclaim a substantial portion of the land classed as unculturable waste today. 

The agricultural products of the district may be dassed as food crops 
and industrial crops. The food crops are the most important. Eice is the 


1 1 1 imi n j ni I rn 1 1 pn 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 m 1 1 1 1 1 p 1 1 m i 1 1 j 1 1 m cm j 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 



374 


B. O. IiAW VOIiTJME 


most important food crop. It is grown everywhere, in smaU plots in the 
north, in large fields in the reclaimed Sundarbans. The acreage under rice 
or paddy was little over 10 lakhs in 1942, 99 per cent of the total cultivated 
area. This unusually hi g h percentage of one crop leads not only to depletion 
of soil fertility but also to the growth of insect pests, and is responsible for thej 
low yields, 14 to 20 maunds per acre, in 1932 the percentage of area under 
rice was 84 or lower than that of 1 942. The tendency, therefore, in recent years 
has been to bring more and more land under rice cultivation. Pulses and other 
TTiirinr food grains were grown on 21,100 acres in 1942, occupying only one- 
fiftieth of the area given to paddy. Jute is the most important industrial 
crop, the acreage under this being 24,896 in 1942. In 1930 it was almost 
three times of its present figure. Next to jute, are fruits and vegetables 
which find a ready market in Calcutta. The area under fruits and vegetables 
was 18,600 acres in 1942. Oil-seeds, spices and sugar-cane are grown primarily 
for home consumption, and on a small scale. The total acreage rmder these 
three types of crops was 6,400 in 1942. In 1930 the total acreage was slightly 
higher. 

In this district as elsewhere in Bengal exists a landed aristocracy. They 
own some 2,000 permanently settled estates, comprising more than one-half 
of the total area of the district. They are not directly in touch with the estates 
they own, but lease out their lands more or less on a permanent basis to 
different persons, who, in their turn, also do the same thing. In this way 
the subinfeudation of land goes on, though rarely extending beyond the third 
grade tenure holder, and ultimately the lands come to the cultivating tenants, 
who for aU practical purposes can be taken as owner-cultivators. These 
cultivators now own 1,661,309 acres, more than one-half of the total area of 
the district, divided up into 811,360 holdings. Thus the average area per 
holding in this district amounts to 1’9 acres, very low indeed. The owner- 
cultivators also have to employ a large number of agricultural labourers to 
cultivate their fields, especially during the times of sowing and harvest. In 
1931 there were 199,167 agricultural workers in regular employment, that is 
to say, 40' 2 per cent of the total cultivators. It is this class that was hard 
hit during the last famine, and due to the shortage of their number the acreage 
under crops could not increase substantially last year (1943). 

The Sundarban area is owned by Government, who in the past had 
divided up the area into blocks, and farmed them out by publio auction, 
but that practice has now almost stopped, the forests being declared as a 
protected area. 

The Live-atoch of 24~Parganaa 

The cattle rearing and feeding do not seem to occupy much of the time 
of the cultivators of 24-Parganas, though the cattle are their best friends. 
The bullock is the chief work animal, dragging the plough in the country 
(see Plate IXA), and hauling heavy carts both in rural and urban areas. In 
the towns the water-buffalo also works as a draft animal. In 1940 there 



LAND XrmiZATION IN THE DISTaiOT OF 24-PAKaANAS, BENGAL 37S 

were some 1,079,491 cattle in the district.^ Of these the vast majority, just 
over ten lakhs, were in rural areas. The number of oxen and male buffaloes 
was 385,961, or 36 per cent of the total. In spite of their impressive number 
the cattle of the district is poor iu quality. This is mainly due to the lack 
;^of proper care and dearth of feed crops. The grazin g grounds for the cattle 
are almost non-existent. In poorer areas they feed on poor grass and stubbles 
of paddy straw after harvest (see Plate XIVB). The well-to-do peasants 
can, however, feed them on paddy straw cut into pieces and mixed with 
oil-cakes and boiled kolai, a kind of pulse. The dairy industry of the district 
is founded on the milk cows, who numbered 440,617 excluding their calves 
in 1940. In recent years, however, it is developing as an organized industry. 
MUk, ghee and curd are the commercial products, reaching the market of 
Calcutta in large quantities. 

Goats and sheep are much less important than cattle. They numbered 
284,482, the number of sheep being less than 10,000. These animals provide 
mainly meat, and only small quantity of milk. 

Ploughs, Garts and Boats 

The peasant of this district ploughs with a wooden or iron tipped plough 
(see Plate VTITA). This kind of plough does not really turn the soil upside 
down, but rather throws it out on both sides, which seldom does the proper 
function of ploughing. Moreover, it does not go deeper than 4 inches, and 
hence the yields per acre are low. Since this kind of plough is not very 
effective, the same plot of land has to be ploughed a number of times (see 
Kg. 4) before seeds are sown or seedlings are transplanted. The number of 
ploughs is also not sufficient. In 1940 they numbered 166,480, at the rate 
of one plough for ten acres of land. 

It has already been pointed out that the greater part of the country is 
not served by good roads, with the result that the only means of conveyance 
available to the farmers are carts and boats. In 1940 there were 33,676 
carts and 8,868 boats, hopelessly inadequate to serve their purpose. 

A Comparative Study 

Let us now study the nature of land utilization in different parts of the 
district (see Table IX). Kgure 10 shows the distribution of the cultivated area 
as a percentage in the total. area. Generally speaking, the northern part of 
the district and Southern Plains have the higher percentage of land under 
the plough, varying between 76 (Barasat-Basirhat Plain) and 77 (Southern 
Plains). The urban industrialized zone has the lowest, though even there 
about one-half of the total area is cultivated. The northern part of the 
Sundarbans has a higher percentage (66) than the southern portion (61). 
The acreage under the plough could be substantially increased in the Sun- 
darbans. 


1 Beport of the Live-stock Census of Bengal, 1940. 



376 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Tam® IX 

Land Utilhation in different regions of 24-Parganas 



Por cent 
of 

culti- 

vated 

area 

Donmty of 
population 
per sq. milo 
of cultivated 
area 

[ 

Acroago por 
holing 

1 Cultur- 
ahlo 
but not 
culti- 
vated 

Un- 
cultur- . 
able 

1. Upper HoogWy Plain 

60 

8,355 

Highest Lowest 
1-33 0-62 

21 

20 

2. Arndanpa-Sarupnagar Plains 

70 

003 

2-01 

l-OS 

13 

12 

3. Barasat^Basirhat Plains 

76 

1,374 

1«77 

1'18 

10 

14 

4. Southern Plains 

77 

1,806 

1«73 

0-08 

10 

13 

6, Northern Plains of tho Sun- 
darhans 

GO 

1,238 

4>49 

1-30 

12 

22 

6. Beclaimed Sundarhans 

G1 

883 

1 

5>07 

2-44 

10 

21 


Figure 11 shows the density of population per square mile of cultivated 
area. This density is the highest in the Upper Hooghly Plain, over 8,000 per 
square mile. The agricultural regions have much lower density, ranging 
between 883 in the reclaimed Sundarhans and 1,876 in the Southern Plains. 
The Amdanga-Sarupnagar Plains in the north have a slightly higher density 
than that of the southern part of the Sundarhans, despite the fact that it 
was one of the earliest regions in the district providing sites for human settle- 
ment. One of the main causes of the sparse population can bo traced to the 
deterioration of rivers. The plains lying further south have about the same 
density, which decreases slightly from north to south. 

Figure 12 shows the acreage per holding in different regions of the district. 
The greater part of the Sundarhans has the highest acreage per holding, the 
average size of each farm ranging between 2 and 6 acres. This area provides 
opportunities for using tractors and other agricultural machineries. Further 
north the average size slightly diminishes. In the rest of the country it ranges 
between 1 and 2 acres, except in the Upper Hooghly Plain, where it har^y 
rises above one acre. 

Figure 13 shows the distribution of arable areas not yet brought imder 
the plough. It is very high throughout the upper part of the Upper Hooghly 
Plain, which shows that there is a considerable scope for developing truck 
fanning in that area. The rich Southern Plains of the district and the lands 
lying on both sides of the Ichamati are fairly intensively cultivated, hence 
the percentages of unutilized agricultural lands are the lowest there. The 
second-highest percentage occurs in the eastern part of the reclaimed Sundar- 
bans, where more land could be easily brought imder cereal crops. 

Figure 14 shows the distribution of the so-called unculturable land in the 
district. It is very high in parts of the urban region, and very low in the 
Amdanga-Sarupnagar Northern Plains. The lower percentage in the latter 
region reflects an intensive utilization in the past. The Southern and Barasat- 

Basirhat Plains have also low figures, because of their intensive use in recent 
yews. 










LAND TTTILIZATION IN THE DISTBICT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 


377 


S 

I 


.S 

r 


^ I 
i ^ 

H e 


•a 

p 


•o 

•£ 

•I 


Per capita 
production 

i 

< 

4^000000 

09 o >0 ^ 10 r-i 
ae9rHeo eo^ 

•HOOOCOt^OOO 

jg 1-4 1-4 

a 

< 

ootHoe9 

o 

u • ^ CO O 

g • 09 1-t I-I 

m 09r-IOOO 

S 

Production in 
each region ae 
percentage of 
the district total 

i 

E 

< 

CO CD 

r^toeatoebcD 

09 i-i ^ 

: 

0 

< 

o o e> o CD 
■^i^pebMo 
eo^ F-i 

Production in 
maunds 

E 

< 

298,680 

1,244,860 

2,224,620 

6,743,700 

3,100,940 

10,743,140 

e CO o (o ^ 

M CD lo 1-4 eo i-H 

S 00 
^ i-T ^ ccT 

Percentage of 
acreage in the 
net cropped 
area of each 
region 

1 

£ 

< 

1 ^ 

1 lOCOCOO^CO 

09 ID CD CD CO o 

1 

a <D *-4 

5 CD lO 00 O »0 O 

<5 09 r1 

Percentage of 
acreage in the 
total area 
of each region 

1 

£ 

< 

1 t 

CO e 00 e 00 >o 

-1 Tjl t> U5 O 

4 

M ^ ^ lO lO ^ 

p C9 cb o cb o 

<{ i-i fH 

•a 

1. upper Hooghly Plain 

2. Amdanga-Sarupnagar Plains 

3. Barosat-Basirhat Plains 

4. Southern Plains 

6. Northern Plains of the Sundarbans 

6. Reclaimed Sundarbans . . 



378 


B. 0. I/AW VOI/UME 


Table X shows statistics relating to avs and amafi, tho two important 
varieties of paddy mostly grown in this district. Tiguros 8, 16, 16, 17 also 
show distribution of those two crops ns percentages of not cropped area and 
their production on a per capita basis. Aman or winter paddy predominates 
over mis in every region. Li tho Southern I'lains tho percentage of acreagg^ 
in tho total area under aman is the highest and that of cropped area is tho 
second-highest in the district. Tho reclaimed Sundarbans grow almost 
nothing but aman. Tho Northern Plains of tho Sundarbans have over 80 
per cent of tho cultivated land imdor aman, tho third-highost figxiro in tho 
district. Tho plains in tho north do not grow as much aman, having hardly 
more than GO per cent of cultivated land under aman. Tho industrialized 
zone of tho district has only one-quarter of its cultivated land under aman. 
The northern part of tho district grows more atts than any other part of tho 
district. As to tho production of rico per capita, it is tho highest in tho re- 
claimed Simdarbans, producing almost as much as tho rest of tho district. 
The Northern Plains of tho Sundarbans also produce more than what is needed 
in the region. Tho other regions, except tho Hooghl3^ Plain, are either just 
sufficient or have a small shortage in regard to rico. Tho Upper Hooghly 
Plain is very much deficient, and draws its supply' from tho agricultural 
regions. 

Table XI shows tho percentage of acreage under cash crops in tho not 
cropped area in different regions. Tho distribution of jute, which is tho 
most important of those crops, is shown in Pig. 18. Jute is grorni mainly in 
the northern part of tho district. Pulses and minor food grains are also grown 
in that part of tho district, and in tho Southern Plains as well. Tho highest 
acreage under fruits and vegetables is found in tho Upper Hooghly Plain. 
Next come tho Barasat-Basirhat Plains in tho north. Pi'uits and vegetables 
are also grown in considerable quantities on a commercial scale in tho neigh- 
bourhood of Baruipur and Bhangar. 


TABI.B XI 

Minor Crops in 24-Parganas 


Bogions 

Por cent of 
area imdor 
juto 

Per cent of 
area imdor 
pulsos and 
othor food 
grains 

Per cent of 
area under 
fruits and 
vegotoblos 

1. Upper Hooghly Plain 

4 

6 

36 

2. Aindanga-Sarupnagar Plains 

14 

10 

8 

3. Barasat-Basirhat Plains . . 

19 

17 

10 

4. Southern Plains 

I'B 

12 

7 

5. Northern Plains of Siindarhans 

5 

S 

c 

C. Eeolaimed Sundarbans . . 

Nil 

Negligible 

1 


Table XII shows the distribution of ploughs, carts and boats, which gives 
some indication of the agricultural conditions prevailing in different ports 
of the district. As to ploughs their density is tho highest in the Southern 







LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTEIOT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 379 

Plains (see Pig. 19). The next highest nnmher is found in the Northern 
Plains of the Sundarbans. The Barasat-Basirhat Plains have also a fairly 
large number of ploughs. The average numbers of ploughs in the reclaimed 
Sundarbans vary between 67 and 107, and in the Amdanga-Sarupnagar 
plains between 24 -and 98. The Upper Hooghly Plain does not need many 
ploughs; hence the number there is the lowest. 


Table XII 

DiMribution of Ploughs, Carts and Boats in 24-Parganas 



Expressed 
per 1,000 acres | 
of land I 


Total numbers 



Ploughs 

Highest Lowest : 

Carts 

Highest 

Lowest 

Boats 

Highest 

Lowest 

1. Upper Hooghly Plain 

69 

Nil 

276 

3 

229 

Nil 

2. Amdanca-Sarupnaear 







Plains 

98 

24 

3,229 

727 

93 

61 

3. Barasat-Basirhat 






Plains 

11« 

72 

2,936 

2,241 

361 

80 

4. Southern Plains 

138 

72 

831 

114 

1,146 

20 

5. Northern Plains of 






the Sundarbans 

131 

97 

1,775 

520 

817 

26 

6. Beclaimod Siindor- 






bans . . 

107 

66 

1,667 

8 

1,123 

141 


Pigures 20 and 21 show the distribution of carts and boats. The density 
of carts is the highest in the Northern Plains of the district, where the road 
mileage including the village roads is ako the highest. There are not many 
boats in this region. The greater part of the Southern Plains is intersected 
by navigable canals and hence depend more on boats than on carts. In some 
parts of the Sundarbans agricultural operations are considerably hampered 
because of the lack of carts and boats. 

Pigures 22 and 23 show the distribution of the live-stock in the district. 
The density of cattle is the highest in the Southern Plains, and the lowest in 
the reclaimed Sundarbans. There are very few sheep and goats in the southern 
part of the district. They are found mostly along the banks of the Ichamati. 

VII. Land Utilization in difeebent Regions 
1. The Upper Hooghly Plain 

This region extends from the extreme north of the district to Budge- 
Budge in the south, cliuging to the river bank throughout. Its total length 
following the meandering course of the Hooghly is about 45 miles. The ma in 
railway line may be taken as its present eastern boundary, thus the width 
of this region nowhere exceeds 2 miles, and ia the greater part of its length 
it is less than a mile wide. The right bank of the Hooghly river lies in the 
districts of Hooghly and Howrah. This river may appear to a stranger as a Rmn.1i 


380 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


edition of the Rhine in the Ruhr district of Germany. But the advantages 
that the Rhine valley enjoy are lacldng here. Goal ftom the nearby fields 
of Raniganj oamiot be brought by river, because of the fact that the Damodar, 
its only tributary coming from the coal-producing areas, is not navigable 
throughout the year. Moreover, unlike in Germany the industries in th<^ 
Hooghly region have no deep roots. Neither the capital invested nor the 
labour employed is indigenous to Bengal. Most of the mills are owned and 
controlled by Europeans and most of the labour population are drawn from 
outside Bengal. It is then natural that such industries, however developed 
they may be, would fail to leave a permanent mark on the country where 
they thrive, and cannot be taken as a real index of the industrial prosperity 
of Bengal. 

All the jute mills of 24-Parganas are located in this region, extending 
fi;om Halisahar in the north to Budge-Budge in the south. The first jute 
mill in this district was started at Gauripur near Naihati in 1852, and by the 
end of the nineteenth century as many as twelve mills were operating. Since 
then those mills more than quadrupled in number. They are not distributed 
evenly over the whole of the region, but are concentrated mostly in four 
places, two lying north of Calcutta, one around Calcutta and the fourth in the 
south, near Budge-Budge. One such concentration in the north of Calcutta 
occurs along a pronoimced concave bond of the Hooghly between Bhatpara and 
Shamnagar, opposite French Chandemagoro (Plate IB). The second con- 
centration is to bo seen further south in the neighbourhood of Klhardah and 
Titagarh. These mills make enormous profits every year, paying in some cases 
over 100 per cent dividend to their share-holders, a large proportion of which 
is spent outside the country. In one year four mills of the first group made 
a profit of over one crore of rupees and two mills of the second group made 
another half a crore. It is not too much to ask these companies to spend a 
part of their profit in reclaiming marsh lands which almost border their fac- 
tories. Even within the factory towns much improvements are needed. The 
workers live in wretched dwelh'ngs and do not enjoy amenities of life with 
which the workers in England, Germany or the United States are accustomed 
(Plate HA). It is because of this that the Bengali workers are not attracted 
to factory life. Had it been otherwise, the pressure of population on arable 
lands would have considerably decreased, and the problem of feeding thousands 
of workers, who have come from outside the province, would have been less 
acute than what is today (1944). 

All the cotton mills excepting one are located north of Calcutta around 
Panihati and Garulia. The six mills occur near Panihati and Khardah. 
The two paper mills are to be foimd at Titagarh and Kankinara near Bhat- 
para. There are eleven large chemical works in this region, including the largest 
one, Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works. These works are mainly 
located in the eastern Canal Area of Calcutta. The majority of the glass 
frictories also occur in that area. The match industry has developed consi- 
derably in recent years. Two of the ten match factories of this region employ 



T.ATJ Tt trTIMZATIOlil IN THE DISTEICT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 


381 


more than 1,000 workers per day. These are located in the northern part of 
Calcutta. Most of the other smaller industries such as pottery works, soap 
factories, bone mills fertilizer works, paint works and lac factories occur in 
the Canal Area of Calcutta. 

Of the engineering works the railway workshops at Kanchrapara are 
the biggest. The general engineering works, numbering about 65, are mostly 
gmn.1T concerns, none of them employing more than 1,000 workers and one-half 
of them employing less than 100 workers per day. Then there are steam boat 
building works, motor-car repairing workshops, and kerosene tinning and 
packing works, all consuming large quantities of iron. Of the engineering 
works utilizing metals other than iron, the lead rolling mil l at Kamarhati, 
and the aluminimn metal stamping works in the neighbourhood of Calcutta 
are the only works of the kind in this district. 

Most of the rice mills have also sprung up around Calcutta. The Calcutta 
and Eastern Canals are primarily responsible for their development. These 
have facilitated the transport of bulky materials like paddy from Eastern 
Bengal to the Tnill areas (see Plate IIB). Hence there is an extreme concen- 
tration of these mills in the Tollygunge area near Calcutta, about 60 per cent 
of the mills of the district occurring there. There is another concentration 
of rice mills on the banks of the canals in the northern suburbs of Calcutta — 
Shambazar and Ultadanga. The third concentration occurs on the east of the 
railway line extending from Talpukur to Chanok and Chandanpukur, that is 
to say, in the Titagarh-Barrackpore area. The rice mills are small in size, 
the average number of workers per mill being 60. 

There are only six flour mills in or arotmd Calcutta, the majority employing 
less than 100 workers per day. Eor industrial purposes, there is one linseed 
oil mill near Eaihati. The rest of the oil mills extract oil from mustard 
seeds, which is used for home consumption. There are also five large bakeries 
and biscuit-making concerns, and one brewary, all in the neighbourhood of 
Calcutta. One of the tobacco factories is located in a southern suburb of 
Calcutta and the other in Kamarhati. 

Of the leather factories and tanneries the one at Kangi, now known as 
Batanagar, about 14 miles south of Calcutta, was started in recent years by 
the Bata Company, and is fast becoming the centre of the leather industry 
in Bengal. 

The four power stations of the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation 
are located at Cossipore, Bhatpara, Mulajore and Garden Reach. The prima 
movers in these power stations are steam turbines, where coal is used as fuel. 

Eor the proper understanding of this region from the point of view of 
administration and utilization, it ought to have been separated from the rest 
of the district, and then sub-divided according to convenience. Actually, 
however, this region forms parts of three separate administrative units— the 
two sub-divisions of Barrackpore and Sadar and the district of Calcutta. 
The smaUest administrative units, i.e. police stations or thanas, within each 
of the two sub-divisions also do not conform to areas having the same human 



382 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


response. Hence the fourteen thanas containing this industrial region also 
include large rural areas (see Fig. 2). 

When we come to study the distribution of population in this region we 
find that the river banlc contams a dense pop\jlation, which thins out in the 
east. Most of the larger towns of this district including tho cities of Calcuttar 
and Bhatpara are located here (see Fig. 1). These may be regarded now as 
satellite towns of Calcutta, though the majority of them wore in existence 
before Calcutta took its present shape. Halisahar in the north of the district 
was a city of palaces and an important commercial centre at the time when 
the Mughals were ruling in India. In earlier times it "was an important 
cultural centre of Bengal, Icnown then by tho name of Kumarhatta. The 
city has lost all its former importance with a consequent decrease in popula- 
tion. In recent years when most of the other towns showed a rapid increase 
of population, the population of this town was increasing slowly, and in one 
decade (1911-21) had experienced a decrease in population (see Fig. 24). 
The presence of stagnant waters in the neighbourhood of this town breeding 
anopheles mosquitoes (.4. culicifacies) and spreading virulent type of malarial 
fever is the main reason why this town has had a stunted growth. Naihati 
was the capital of the Moghtd Emperor for some time. Its population is 
increasing rather slowly but steadily. Bhatpara is another historical place, 
and still is a cultural centre of Bengal. The starting of a number of mills 
in this town led to the rapid increase of population of this to^vn since 1901, 
the number exceeding one laldi at the time of the last census. Titagarh is 
the only other town that showed rapid development since the beginning of this 
century. Ediardah and Fanihati are religious centres of Bengal. Barrack- 
pore owes its name to the presence of soldiers in barracks since the latter 
part of the eighteenth century. It was second only to Calcutta in population 
at the time of the first census, but its population did not increase materially 
in the next fifty years. 

The trend of population of Baranagar followed closely that of Calcutta, 
as greater Calcutta really extends as far north as Baranagar. The population 
of Calcutta increased by almost three times (see Fig. 24). Since the first 
census was taken, the city extended mainly southward as its development 
in the other three directions was not possible for one reason or other. The 
salt marshes in the east, the wide river barrier in the west, and the already 
crowded areas in the north are the main reasons for its growth southward. 
It is perhaps the only city of the world that stands amidst an undeveloped 
rural setting, and is in strong contrast even with the other urban centres of the 
province. The expansion of Calcutta in the south is responsible for the 
extension of the jurisdiction of the Corporation of Calcutta beyond the city 
proper in that direction. The ocean-going liners come as far as the Garden 
Beach of the Hooghly, where docks line the river bank, extending up to 
Kidderpore. Ahpore is the administrative headquarters of the district of 
24-Parganas. Majerhat is an important railway junction, which is growing 
m importance because of its proximity to the Kidderpore docks and Alipore 



LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OE 24-RABGANAS, BENGAL 383 

aerodrome. Ballygunge is the residential suburb of Calcutta, and its artificial 
lakes are bigger and more beautifcd than those of the Hyde Park of London 
and of the Boi de Boulogne of Paris. ToUygunge is slowly developing, where 
a. number of rice mills centre around the town especially in Italghata. The 
population of this town in the last decade increased more rapidly than in 
the previous decades. The southern suburbs of Calcutta extend up to Behala 
and Barisa. Both of them are historical towns. An ancient capital of Bengal 
was situated near Barisa. The northern suburbs are much less developed. 
They are not preferred as much as the southern ones as residential quarters. 
Dum-Dum has more open spaces, providing garden houses for the rich citizens 
of Calcutta. Moreover, this town is the Croydon of Bengal. The direction 
of winds may have something to do with this one-sided development of the 
city of Calcutta. Even within the city proper the south-facing houses have 
a special charm because of the fact that the cool sea breeze comes regularly 
fi:om the south or south-west in the hot season. Thus the areas Ijdng south 
of the city of palaces have had a better chance to grow. Budge-Budge occupies 
the southernmost edge of this region. It is well connected with Calcutta by 
rail, road and river. A number of jute and cotton mills have recently sprung 
up in its neighbourhood, and have made it an important industrial centre 
of Bengal, Moreover, it is the main petroleum distributing centre in this 
part of India. South of this town all along the left bank of the Hooghly 
right up to Diamond Harbour there are excellent sites for starting new in- 
dustries, and it is expected that in the coming post-war period such sites 
should bo explored thoroughly before starting new mills and factories in the 
already crowded northern areas. 

The greater part of the thanas containing the built-up industrial areas 
is, however, rural, and remains yet to be developed. Agriculturally they 
have immense possibilities, and should come first in any agricultural planning 
which the Government may adopt after the war is over. The marsh lands 
of the northern part of this region comprising the three thanas — Bijpur, 
Haihati and Jagaddal — are to be drained, and the old beds of rivers and canals 
which once used to join the Hooghly are to be resuscitated. The Mathura bil 
and its western extension the Bagher Khal, which run along the northern 
boundary of the region, should be excavated first, which would not only 
considerably improve the sanitary conditions of the towns of Kanchrapara 
and HaUsahar, but would bring under the plough about one-third of the 
arable lands of the thana of Bijpur, which remains unutilized at the moment. 
South of Bijpur in Naihati and Jagaddal another east-west running chaimel' 
had dried up. Its probable course was through the small village of Bhaba- 
gachi, Dogachia and Madrail, entering into the Hooghly near Bhatpara. 
This channel has to be opened up, and the Ichapur hlial which was constructed 
to drain the Bariti hil is to be widened. The northernmost part of the Bariti 
hil should be drained by another chaimel, which did fiow once through Mir- 
zapur and Shamnagar. These improvements will lead to the utilization of 
more than 10 square miles of arable lands either for market gardening or for 


S84 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


some intensive cultivation in the thanas of Naihati, Jagaddal, Noapara, 
Barraokpore and Titagarli. In Khardah, which occurs further south, a con- 
siderable portion of rich arable lands is lying waste, because of poor drainage. 
Part of it, especially the Kheba bil portion, is drained by a small narrow ohaimeh 
which enters the Hooghly at Khardah. This channel, and the Nawi Khar 
which flows southward draining the Bariti 6i7, should also bo improved. The 
net gain will be the agricultural produce of some 10 square miles of area in 
this thana alone. The importance of the thana of Dum-Dum is mainly due 
to its proximity to Calcutta, and this is one of the two thanas of the industrial 
region that does not extend right up to the river banlc and consequently 
large-scale industries have not so far been started. Since the greater part of 
this area is low-lying, a better drainage will transform about one-half of the 
thana into productive agricultural land. 

South of Calcutta the marsh lands occur in two places. The eastern part 
of ToUygvmge area is marshy, which is really the continuation of the Calcutta 
marshes. A comprehensive scheme for developing this area should be spon- 
sored. The greater part of the Budge-Budge thana in the south of the Charial 
Midi also gets water-logged during the rains. Here the Baita marshes are to 
be drained first. A nmnber of dry water comses, independent of each other, 
occur in the southern part of the Budge-Budge thana, the remnants of a 
system of drainage ohaimels. These need resuscitation. 

Table XIII shows the nature of land utilization and the degree of self- 
sufficiency in regard to the agricultural products in different parts of the 
Upper Hooghly Plain (see also Kgs. 8, 10, 11, 13 to 18). 

The two northern thanas, Naihati and Jagaddal, and the three southern 
thanas, Behala, Maheshtala and Budge-Budge, have over 60 per cent of the 
land under the plough. In each of these areas the proportion of unproductive 
land is low indeed. In Titagarh and Khardah over 60 per cent of the lands 
is cultivated. The proportion of cultivated land is below the regional average 
in the remaining portions of the Upper Hooghly Plain. Noapara and Barrack- 
pore in the north, and ToUygunge in the south, have the lowest acreage imder 
the plough. Generally speaking, the smaller the area the smaller is the 
proportion of cultivated land, because of high concentration of industries 
along the river bank. 

It is interesting to note that the areas with a high percentage of cultivable 
but uncultivated laud such as Bijpur, Noapara and Jagaddal had a considerable 
increase of population during the decade 1931-41, whereas the areas with a 
much smaller percentage of such land, that is to say, Behala, Maheshtala and ^ 
Budge-Budge, could not have a substantial increase of population. The 
proportion of unproductive land was the highest in Barraol^ore, over one- 
half, and near about 40 per cent in Noapara, Baranagar, ToUygunge and 
Metiabruz. It wiU be remembered that these are either highly industrialized 
or very tluckly populated. ToUygunge is perhaps the only exception, where 
marsh lands prevaU. 



Tabijs xin 

Land Utilization in the Upper Hooghly Plain 


LAXD TTOmiZATION IN THE DISTEIOT OF 24 -PARGANAS, BENGAL 


385 





"S 1 i 
§ § 1 : 
o'M "3 
fg o o 


Pi 


O c8 


coaooi>^e 9 t*cot«i-HTi<c 900 

C 4 i-ii-(eoudc 4 eoi-ic 4 ^oie 4 c 394 


« o c 8 -e 
u , ^ **2 d d 

o«« p g o >. 

O 43 ^ 


Ot*i-tOkPOOt«OtOOOt*C& 

CQf-i& 4 e< 9 c 0 i^e^e 304 C 4 i-Hi-Hi-( 


to 


o 

a 

d »4 «a 

o o 

8 

<; -d 


e 0 f- 4 coeoc)t«c»^i-te»eoe 4 oeo 

e<de 9 f-^coiac«cDOi>caoooooi 


o o 

•■§•§ S'g > o 

pa ffg 


0 ^e 4 iPlOt«c^OC 4 *<^(-(C 9 CDOO 

oeof-^ooae^cooi^ooo^o 

CO 1 -^ ^ co^ « CO tp » CO 

lOiot^t^c^^NN^isreocot-eo 

I-H 00 O 64 


S ‘-ia 'd 

83 lg 

U O C H 
o tM > O 

(k o 


t*tdoeo^caeoiat^T*<ot>^i-H 

^ooeo»-‘»a^»P^eooo^t^ 


d 

o 

49 

d ^ 

’3 a 

§<B 

n . 

«H O' 
O V 

>> 5 ! 
^ O 

*® d< 
o 

p 


oiaia 64 G 4 cpuo^coi-i^ot*o 
ooeoeoaoc-^© 4 i-Hi-iot~'-<^'«i< 
00 04 O P* 

e*reo‘»crf^r^»^c 4 ‘o 4 ‘orco’‘c^co>i^e 4 ‘ 
fh oi 


fN eo rH 0> O r-i>p 00 fH QD CO 04 04 00 
CO O F4 C0'<«i< O O 00 O 00 l> o 04 CP O 
o t-F 4 FHCirH*P'^M^C^COO 4 ^COe 0 ^ 


g 

■■gp 

•S'* 

as 

o 

P 4 


l 9 iaoCdl 9 pHCPC 404 ^C 4 '«i 4000 
C 0 l 0 F 4 C 0 rHF-(C»OC »04 00 CPCP 04 
CO l> c^ 00 C<^ 04 W eo CO ^ O 00 O^ 

ooi-rcrooco‘eoco-^coocr'«drc4»o 

191004 COe 4 COO'Tf^OOCO)OOCO 


.a „ 
ao':§ 
I"S 


iocococOTi<»MOF 4 cocooooeot* 
F-tr-t04 f 4 e4i-<04 04 F4 lO 


d 

g 

A 

e 




TabIiB XIII — continued 


386 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


S Oi 

^ S S’S 

O Q S 

'43 :g a 

o 




to ^ r-t lO iO 

53 pM 

gNOOO^Og©OOi-»COOOO 

Soooo O OOOOOOO 


Per capita 
pulses 

Negligible 

Per cent of 
area under 
pulses and 
other food 
grains 

IH Pi 

.1 

^c<9coe406 C4ceei3e<i <s 

fe-r-r-«ogM.o««|g|go 
gooo© 0000 © 

Per cent of 
area 

under jute 


Am 

per capita 

Md. sr. ch. 
0 19 3 

0 9 16 

0 3 2 

0 0 4 
Nil 

0 1 11 

0 0 6 

0 11 14 

0 6 7 
Nil 

0 0 12 
Nil 

Nil 

Nil 

**•* 

z § 

^ g <3 
^§1 

1 9 


Aman 
per capita 

Md. sr. oh. 
13 7 

1 17 13 

0 39 16 

0 11 11 

Negligible 

1 21 12 

0 8 8 

2 4 6 

1 31 10 
16 7 

2 34 12 

2 36 12 
12 6 

3 12 5 


o 


€ A § § 

S P '0 Q 

gMi 

Pi 


I 


cQeo©pc9©t-t«o©^e^eoud 

CO ud © CO CO ^ ^ 00 © 00 


1 s 

a . 

3 Q 


6 

gN 

SN 


0 

CQ 


2 

o 


n d 2. 




a 

.'O 

o 



'D 


25 B 



LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTBICT OE 24-PAIIGANAS, BENGAL 387 





388 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


In the greater part of the distriot the percentages of the net cropped area 
producing more than one crop are very low. Only in the Budge-Budge 
thana, which is essentially rural, about one-fifth of the cultivated land produces 
more than one crop. 

Of the crops cultivated, aman is the most important. In the southemT 
part of the district over 80 per cent of the cultivated fields was given to that 
crop. North of Calcutta the highest percentage under aymn was in the 
Dum-Dum and Titagarh thanas. Truck farming takes the second place in 
the agricultural geography of the region. In certain parts as at Barrackpore 
nothing but finiits and vegetables are grown. The three other thanas, Noapara, 
Baranagar and ToUygunge, have one-half of agricultural land under fruits 
and vegetables. Potatoes, onions and various kinds of vegetables such as 
brinjal, cabbages, cauliflowers and tomatoes are raised in this region. Avs 
is grown only in the northernmost part. Jute and other crops are grown in 
small quantities. The production of rice per copifa was the highest in the 
southern part of the region, though even there not enough is produced to meet 
the local demands. The northern thanas are hopelessly deficient in rice. 
It is only in firaits and vegetables that the region is self-sufficient, but not in 
potatoes. The per capito production of other crops is very low. 

Pishing is a subsidiary occupation of the farmers of this region. Calcutta 
has valuable fishery of immense possibilities in the Salt Lake. 

Table XIV shows the distribution of the live-stock, ploughs, carts and 
boats of the region. The density of cattle is nowhere more than 500 per square 
mile, except in Baranagar where it is just over 700. Barraclqpore in the north 


Tabie XIV 

DUlribution of Live-stock, Ploughs, Carls and Boats in the Upper Hooghly Plain 



Livb-sxooe 




Thanas 

Cattle 

Sheep and goats 

Ploughs 

Total number 

Total 

Density 

per 

sq. mile 

■1 

Number 

per 

1,000 

persons 

1,000 

acres 




number 

■ 


Carts 

Boats 

Bijpur 

Kaihati 

Jagaddal 

Noapara 

Barrackpore . . 

Titagarh 

Baranagar 

Kliardah 

Dnn-Dum 

Tollygtmge . . 

Behala 

Mahe^tala . . 

Metiahruz 

Budge-Budge 

7,422 

7,321 

9,382 

2,460 

362 

4,602 

4,988 

8,183 

6,248 

6,344 

6,896 

2,883 

947 

22,986 

496 

488 

426 

492 

181 

418 

712 

409 

360 

214 

346 

169 

316 

442 

702 

934 

801 

376 

36 

546 

1,020 

1,201 

996 

1,877 

940 

470 

477 

3,749 

28 

20 

8 

12 

2 

11 

12 

36 

30 

42 

21 

12 

60 

40 

37 

52 

131 

Nil 

Nil 

16 

38 

63 

52 

48 

18 

11 

69 

120 

276 

261 

46 

8 

168 

48 

265 

164 

135 

98 

22 

3 

197 

14 

35 

6 

25 

1 

9 

12 

11 

11 

6 

27 

9 

229 












LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTBICT OF 24-FAEaANAS, BENGAL 389 

and Maheshtala and ToUygunge in the south had the lowest density (see 
Kg. 22). The number of goats and sheep per 1,000 persons was very low 
in most of the thanas, especially in the north. ToUygunge, Metiabruz and 
Budge-Budge had the highest number, but even there it never exceeded 
i>60 per 1,000 persons. The density of sheep and goats was the lowest in the 
northern part of the region (see Kg. 23). The numbers of carts and boats 
per 1,000 acres of land were also very low (see Kg. 20). In the north the total 
number of carts over 200 was found only in Naihati, Jagaddal and Khardah. 
Naihati also had the highest number of boats. 

2. Amdanga-Sarv^magar Plains 

It has already been mentioned that these plains were once drained 
efficiently by several north-south flowing rivers, which have in most cases 
dried up, with the result that the greater part of the region gets marshy in 
the rains. On the other hand, arable lands do not get enough water because 
of the silting up of the rivers. In the western part of the region the aimual 
rainfaU is also below 60 inches (see Kg. 8), which may account for the deteriora- 
tion of the rivers, especiaUy from the time the main Ganges moved eastward. 

West of the Sunti Plain there are stiU traces of more than one channel. 
These are to be connected with each other, and deepened. For example, 
a channel used to flow southeast from the Mathura hil to the Sunti Nadi. 
A part of it is stiU noticeable especiaUy near the Mathura bil, and the presence 
of a number of tanlis, arranged in a line, certainly helps one to know definitely 
which way the channel used to flow in the past. The Sunti Nadi is to be 
straightened between Bajbaria and Metiagacha by some 6 miles. East 
of the Sunti Plain dry watercourse can be seen in the neighbourhood of Habra, 
through which the Padma used to flow once. North of the railway line and 
the Jessore road the deterioration of the Padma is complete. Something shoidd 
be done to this river chamiel in order to restore the agricultural prosperity of 
this area. The Jamima should also be restored to its former bed. It is now 
confined in the northern part of the region, and even there it flows so sluggishly 
that it becomes difficult to distinguish between stagnant and running water. 
Near Gobardanga the channel has been partitioned by erecting bamboo poles 
to estabUsh fishing rights of individuals (see Plate ITT A ). The Nangla group 
of bits almost enclosed by the Padma occupies an area of 26"36 square miles. 
East of the Ichamati the BaUi bil area occupies another 21'46 square miles. 
The Padma roughly divides the region into two parts, having somewhat 
different agricultural problems to solve, more of irrigation in the west, and of 
|L drainage in the east. A number of important inter-district routes pass 
through this region, serving the important towns of the district. There 
exist also a number of unmetaUed roads, which are not motorahle in the rains. 
The water-ways assume some importance in the east, where there are very few 
roads. 

The density of population in this region is rather low, ranging between 
587 and 652 per square mile. The eastern part is more thickly populated 



















IiA.ND TTTILTZATION IN THE DISTRICT OF 24-FARaANAS, BENGAL 391 

because of the lohamati river, which is still active. Gohardanga on the 
Jamuna — ^the largest town of the region — ^is one of the historical towns of 
Bengal. Its population has been, however, continually decreasing from 1872 to 
1932, and since then showed some slight increase (see Fig. 26). About 4 miles 
‘♦east of Gobardanga an annual fair is held in Diara at the confluence of the 
Jamuna and Ichamati rivers. Sarupnagar on the Ichamati, Maslandpur on 
the northern terminus of the Baduria-Maslandpur road, Jirat on the Sunti 
at the crossing of a north-south road and a east-west road, Habra on the 
Padma, are some of the prosperous villages of the region. The concentration 
of population occm’s along river banks. 

Table XV shows the nature of land utilization and the degree of self- 
sufficiency in regard to the agricultural products of the region (see Figs. 8, 10, 
11, 13 to 18). The percentage of land under the plough is the highest in the 
eastern and western marginal plains, and the lowest in the central plains> 
but nowhere it comes even up to 80. Unlike in the industrialized Hooghly 
Plain the diflerence in densities per square mile calculated on the basis of total 
and cultivated area is not very much pronounced here. The percentages of 
cultmable but uncultivated area range between 9 and 12, the highest in the 
central part, and the lowest in the east. The percentage of unculturable area 
is also the highest in the central zone. About one-fifth of the cultivated land 
produces more than one crop in the flood plains of the Ichamati; this per- 
centage is very low elsewhere. As to the crops grown in the region, the 
acreage imder aman paddy, though the highest, is not as much as in the 
other regions. The smaller rainfall, sandy soil and deterioration of some of 
the perennial watercourses are some of the causes of decrease in the acreage 
of aman and consequent increase of that of aus. In the central part about 
one-third of the cultivated land is put imder aus. This is also one of the 
important jute-growing areas of 24-Parganas. In the eastern part (Sarup- 
nagar) considerable quantities of pulses are also grown. The per capita 
production flgures indicate that this region is self-sufficient in rice, and has 


TABiai XVI 

Distribution of Livestock, Ploughs, Oarls and Boats in the Amdanga-Sarupnagar 

Northern Plains 


Thanas 

i 

IjXVS*2 

i 

Cattlo 

1 

5TOCXC 

Sheep and goats 

Ploughs 

per 

1,000 

acres 

Total number 

1 

Total 

number 

Density 

per 

sq.mile 

Total 

number 

1 

Number 

per 

1,000 

persons 

Carts 

Boats 

Amdanga 

21,010 

3S9 

4,099 

120 

98 

1,698 

93 

Habra 

48,22S 

447 

9,162 

144 

■95 

3,229 

51 

Sarupnagar . . 

6,945 

84 

1,610 

40 

24 

727 

• 84 


















392 


B. C. LAW VOLUME 


even es^jortable surplus, which is stored up in granaries (Plate IILB). The 
entire crop of jute finds easy market in Calcutta, though there is some scope 
for establishing a jute mill on the Ichamati. The region is not self-sufficient 
in other agricidtural products. 

Table XVI shows the distribution of the live-stock, ploughs, carts and boats.r 
The density of cattle is the lowest in the eastern part of the district, and not 
much above 400 in other parts. The numbers of sheep and goats per 1,000 
persons and also per square mile are the lowest in the east. The central part 
has the highest number of carts, but the lowest number of boats (see Figs. 
20 to 23). 

3. The Barasat-Basirkat Plains 

These agricultural plains are the most productive in the northern part of 
the t district. The southeastern part between the Bidyadhari (Batagachi 
Gang) and Ichamati rivers is fairly well drained, except a small area enclosed 
by the Singa Nadi. This area is included in the Basirhat thana. The north- 
eastern part has the south-flowing Ichamati in the east and the north-flowing 
Padma in the west, and contains large compact villages, which are within the 
jurisdiction of the Baduria thana. The central part of this region comprising 
the thana of Deganga is not so well drained. The Deganga bil looks like a 
part of a tributary which lost its connection with the main river. There are 
quite a number of such lakes running straight for some distance. The Bidya- 
dhari river (Nona Gang) which forms its western boimdary is brackish during 
flood-tide and hence in the upper part it is known as Nona Gang. The western 
part is included in the Barasat thana. The northern half of Barasat is drained 
mainly by the Sunti and contains rich fields, but the southern half contains 
a number of marshes, which are drained by the Sunti and the Harua Gang. 
These bits and adjacent lands have been converted into fisheries by dividing 
them into several blocks, and then each being enclosed by mud embankments 
(see Plate IVA). Such fisheries are known as bheries. During flood-tide 
brackish water enters into these, and along with it enter fish of various kinds, 
but they cannot come out again, and are caught with fishing net or by some 
other device (see Plate IVB). During the time the author visited this 
part of 24-Parganas he could see clearly the evil effect of the embankments 
in preventing rainwater to reach cultivated fields, whereas brackish water 
could easily enter at high-tide, rendering the fields more and more unfertile. 
Agriculture is the main occupation of the population of the surrounding 
villages, though very few of them are owner-cultivators. They* take to 
fishing or some other subsidiary occupation like gur (treacle)-making, when 
they are not engaged in cultivation. The date-palm is cultivated in sandy 
fertile areas in this and most of the other regions of the district, not for its 
fimts, but for its juice which is obtained by tapping the stem, just below the 
crown of the leaves (Plate VA). The trees are tapped in autumn, soon after 
the harvest of aman paddy. It is by boiling this date juice in pans that gur 
is obtained, which is more delicious to taste than that made ffom cane juice. 


393 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTEICT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 

This industry is unorganized at present, though attempts are being made to 
start a plantation of date-palm on soientifie lines with a view to manufacturing 
white sugar from date juice. 

The southern half of the plains in the east has the highest density of 
fjpopulation per square mile. Here the concentration of population occurs 
mainly on the right hank of the Ichamati, giving rise to Basirhat with a 
population of over 26,000, the largest town in the region. It is an important 
rice exporting centre of the district (see Plate VB), and daily growing in 
importance. Pig. 25 shows this point dearly. The population of this town 
grew rapidly since 1881. A sugar mill has recently been started in this town. 
Baduria on the Ichamati is the second largest town of this region. It is also 
an important trade centre, though its population did not increase appreciably 
since 1881. The town of Taki though included within the thana of Hasnabad 
occupies rather the southwestern extremity of the Barasat-Basirhat Plains. 
It stands on a concave bend of the Ichamati, which is being worn away rapidly 
by the force of water (see Plate VIA). Since 1921 the town is developing 
rapidly. Water-hyacinth has also invaded the tanlcs of this town (see Plate 
VIB). 

In the central plauis the population is more dispersed. Deganga is 
the only town of some importance. Near it occur ruins of an old capital 
of Bengal. The western plains are more thicldy populated than those just 
mentioned, the density of population being about 1,000 per square mile. 
Here the population is concentrated either along the Sunti Nadi or along 
some roads or water-ways. Barasat is a nodal town, a number of roads and 
two railways converging toward it. Despite the favourable location the 
population of this town could not show much increase since 1881. Madhyam- 
gram is another nodal village, lying south of Barasat. Dattapukur is noted 
for its milk products, chana and hMr, which come to Calcutta market daily. 

Table XVII shows the nature of land utilization and the degree of self- 
sufficiency in regard to the agricultural products of this region (see also 
Kgs. 8, 10, 11, 13 to 18). 

The density of population per square mile of cultivated area is also the 
highest in the Basirhat thana, and the lowest in Deganga. Over 70 per cent 
of the land is cultivated in all the four thanas of this region, the proportion 
of such arable land being higher in the eastern than in the western part. 
The northern portion of the eastern plains produces more than one crop in about 
one-third of its cultivated lands. In the southern portion of thdte plains 
only 16 per cent of the cultivated land is twice-cropped. In the west the 
percentage decreases to 8. The percentages of unproductive 1a,ndg in the 
total area of each thana, culturable but uncultivated and unculturable, are 
low in this region. The western part has the higher percentage of the first 
type, the eastern part having the higher percentage of the second type. The 
highest acreage of cultivated land is under aman as usual, but as in the plaina 
of Amdanga and Sarupnagar, Baduria and Deganga have considerable acreage, 
about one-quarter of the cultivated laud under aus. 


394 


B. 0. liAW VOLUME 


Table XVII 

Land Utilization in the Barasat-Basirhat Plains 


Thanas 

Area in 
sq. 
miles 

Bopnla- 

tion 

(1941) 

Density of 
population per 
sq. mUe 

Per cent 
of 

culti' 

vated 

area 

Density of 
population 
per 

sq. mile 
of culti- 
vated area 

Acreage 

per 

holding 




1931 

1941 

■m 



Basirbat 

100 

125,164 

1.066 



1,380 

1*77 

Baduria 

80 

83,684 




1,078 

1-61 

Deganga 

78 


1,131 

829 


967 

1,47 

Barasat 

104 

99,064 


m 

71 

1,117 

M8 


Thanas 

Per cent 
of 

cultur- 
able but 
not cul- 
tivated 
area 

Percent 

of 

uncul- 

turable 

area 

Percent 
of twice- 
cropped 
area 

Percent 
of area 
under 
aman 

Aman per 
capita 

Per cent 
of area 
imder 
aus 

Aus per 
capita 






Md. sr. cli. 


Md. sr. ch. 

Basirhat 

8 

16 

17 

66 

6 0 8 

6 

0 16 3 

Baduria . . 

8 

14 

31 

44 

4 2 1 

22 

1 23 2 

Deganga 

10 

14 

8 

46 

4 30 6 

26 

0 24 4 

Barasat . . . . 

16 

13 

7 

1 

61 

I 

6 34 3 

17 

1 14 1 


Thanas 

Percent 
of area 
under 
jute 

Jute per 
capita 

Per cent 
of area 
under 
pulses 
and 
minor 
food 

1 grains 

Prodiro- 
tion per 
capita 
pmses 

1 

Minor food 
grains 

Per cent 
of area 
imder i 
&aits 
and 
vege- 
tables 

Fruits and 
vegetables 
per capita 



Md. sr. ch. 


Md. sr. ch. 

Md. sr. ch. 


Md. sr. ch. 

Basirhat 

19 

1 13 11 

19 

! 0 0 2 

0 14 1 

8 

0 22 12 

Baduria 

23 

13 7 

33 

0 1 16 

0 32 3 

9 

1 39 14 

Deganga 

! 19 

0 9 9 

8 


0 10 

10 

1 36 2 

Barasat 

1 

I 1 13 6 

8 

o 

o 

0 9 2 

16 

0 2 0 




PBODxromoN per capita of 








i 

Fodder 
crops per 
cattle 

Thanas 

Condi- 
ments and 
^ices 

Sugar-cane 

Potatoes 

1 

Oil-seeds 

1 

Tobacco 


Md. sr. ch. 

Md. sr. ch. 

1 

Md. sr. ch. 

Md. sr. ch. 

Md. sr. ch. 


Basirhat 

Baduria 

Deganga 

Barasat 


0 15 4 

0 31 0 
Nil 

0. 0 4 

0 17 1 

0 13 12 

0 4 1 

0 17 16 

0 3 14 

0 16 
Nil 

0 0 3 

0 0 6 

0 0 1 
NU 

Na 


















































IiAITD UTILIZATION IN THE DISTKICT OE 24-PAKGANAS, BENGAL 395 

In Baduna in another one-third of the cultivated area is produced pulses 
and minor food grains; considerable quantities of jute are also grown. Thus 
multiple cropping on large scale is practised only in this part of the region. 
Baduria, has, however, the lowest acreage under aman, though producing 
'%nough to satisfy local needs. Basirhat has the highest production of aman 
rice over 6 maunds, per capita, and hence it can export large quantities. 
Barasat has also large exportable surplus of rice. Basirhat and Baduria 
in the east and Barasat in the west produce more than one Tnn.iiTir^ of jute per 
capita. 

Table XVIII shows the distribution of the live-stock, ploughs, carts and 
boats in this region (see all Rgs. 19 to 23). The density of cattle is lower 
in the east than in the west. Basirhat, however, had the highest number of 
sheep and goats. The same area also had the highest numbers of ploughs, 
carts and boats. 

Table XVUI 


Distribution of Livestock, Ploughs, Carts and Boats in the Barasat-Basirhat Plains 


Thanns. 

Live-i 

Cattle 

STOOE 

Sheep and goats 

Ploughs 

per 

1,000 

acres 

Total number 

Total 

number 

Denmty 

per 

sq. mile 

Total 

number 

Number 

per 

1,000 

persons 

Carts 

Boats 

Basirhat 

32,699 

327 

17,799 

180 


2,904 

361 

Baduria 

21,832 

270 

5,631 

78 


2,241 

174 

Degonga 

29,640 

380 

9,326 

162 


2,936 

92 

Barasat . . . , | 

1 

38,023 

366 

8,171 

88 

■H 

2,686 

80 


4. The Southern Plains 

The Southern Plains form the richest and densely populated agncultural 
region of 24-Farganas. It is completely encircled by an embankment, so that 
braoldsh water from the tidal Sundarbans river may not have any access to 
this region (see Kg. 1). The relief and drainage conditions of these plains 
have already been described. The villages are compact and contain neat 
thatched cottages surrounded by pressed mud wall. The palm trees, bamboo 
groves, tamarind and other shady trees mark the sites of villages (see Plate 
VH A). Of the palm trees, date-palm and palm 3 ^a predominate and provide 
good income to the owners. They can grow anywhere, though more properly 
around a marshy area (see Plate VHB). 

The Baruipur-Jaynagar Plain, formed by the Hooghly in the past, con- 
centrates more on fioiits, vegetable and betel than on cereals. The metalled 
Baruipur-Bishnupur road, which runs from Calcutta to Bishnupur through 
Baruipur and Jaynagar-Majilpur, enables these perishable goods to be trans- 





















SOG 


B. a. LAW VOIiTJME 


ported rapidly to Calcutta market by tnicks. Baruipur, as its name indi- 
cates, is one of the few places of the district where betel orchards can bo 
soon (see Plato VIIIA). The betel plants are very delicate and grow only 
inside a thatched house. Baruipur is noted for its oxcollont juicy litchi fruit. 
The litchi trees grow well in a loamy well-drained soil (see Plate VIITB);^- 
Horo lower portions of the old bed of the Ganges are ploughed and put under 
rice cultivation (see Plato IXA). For cultivating crops other than atmn 
it is necessary to raise the ground to about 4 feet above the general level of the 
river bed, to ensure safety from inundation during the rains (see Plato IXB). 
The old bod of the Ganges is clearly recognizable ns one proceeds from Jaynagar 
to Bislmupur. One of the banks has provided site for the road, and over the 
other runs a railway (see Plato XA). The greater part of the bed has not . 
been reclaimed. It gets flooded during the rains, and hence a largo area 
containing rich soil remains uncidtivatcd. The excellent soils in the flood 
plains of the extinct river have given rise to a number of brick fields (see 
Plato XB). A number of tanks have been excavated in deeper parts of the 
old bed, which still retain all the sanctity of the Ganges (see Plate XIA). 
West of the Baruipur-Jaynagar Plain the country is drained by a number of 
canals, maldng it possible to utilize all the available land. Even whore it is 
not drained properly, especially in the low-lying portions of the country, a 
number of ponds are excavated at different levels, and used as fisheries. Koi 
{Anabas scandas), Magur and Singhi fish that love stagnant, dirty waters 
are cultured in those fisheries. The water is lifted up by long water buckets 
from the lower to the next higher pond and when it becomes dry such fish 
are caught by hand (see Plato XIB). The Kulpi canal serves the southern part, 
passing through rich rice fields. The date-palms invariably grow along the banks 
of this canal (see Plato XIIA). The scenery at the confluence of this canal 
with the Ganges is superb (see Ploto XIIB). 

All the plains in tliis region are thicldy populated and have a density 
of over 1,000 persons per square mile. The Kulpi Plain, which occupies the 
southernmost part of the region, is rather thinly populated, especially in its 
southern section. In the central part the population pattern is of dispersal 
type. Elsewhere it is arranged in a linear fasliion, especially along the old 
bed of the Hooghly, where double-line of settlements can bo seen. The whole 
of this region is well served by roads, railways and water-ways, and this accounts 
for its agricultural prosperity. Jaynagar-Majilpur is the largest toum in this 
region. Its population increased rather slowly fix)m 1872 to 1921 and since 
then has a more rapid upward trend (see Fig. 26). There are a number of 
beautiful temples in this town (see Plato XIIIA). Baruipur is the second 
largest town in the district. This town had a stunted growth in the past 
(see Fig. 25). Magrahat is an important rice exporting centre. Tho railway 
station is connected with a canal, to facilitate transport of rice (see Plate 

XmB). 

Table XIX shows the distribution of the live-stock, ploughs, carts and 
boats in this region. The percentages of area under cultivation in the total 


Tasi<x) XIX 

Land Utilization in the Southern Plaine 


LAND TnHUZATION IN THE DISTEIOT OF 24-PAHGANAS, BENGAL 397 



Per capita 
production 
of pulsoB 

Negligible. 

Per confc of 
area 
under 
pulsos and 
minor food 
grains 

»M tM O vH 

Jut© per 
capita 

2 o^«o 

Per cent of 
area 
undor 
into 

m4 pM pM 

2 

|l 

O 

^ GO to 1-4 

a© oo 

Per cent of 
area 

undor aw 


Produc- 
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aman 
per capita 

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398 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


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LA'SI> trUIiIZATlON IN THE DISTRICT OE 24-PAEGANAS, BENGAL 399 

area of each thana vary between 61 and 83. In the central part extending 
from Bishnupur to Knlpi and comprising the four thanas, Bishnupur, Magrahat, 
Diamond Harbour and Kulpi, the percentages of such laud are over 80. In 
most of these plains none of the holdings exceeds 2 acres. The north- 
eastern part (Sonarpur) has the highest percentage of arable land, which is 
not yet cultivated. Bishnupur, Magrahat and Diamond Harbour have the 
lowest percentage of such unutilized land. The percentage of unculturable 
land is below 20 everywhere. 

The acreage under aman is very high in all the plains, over 90 per cent 
in most of the thanas. Sonarpur and Baruipur grow more fruits and vegetables 
hence the percentages under aman do not rise much above 80. The other 
crops are grown mainly for home consumption. The per capita production 
figures indicate that the region as a whole has a considerable exportable 
surplus of aman rice. The distribution of ploughs, cattle, sheep and goats, 
carts and boats show some interesting features (see Table XX). 


Tabi/e XX 

Distribution of Live-stooh, Ploughs, Carts and Boats in the Southern Plains 


Tlmnas 

Live-! 

Cattlo 

3XOOE 

Sheep and goats 

Ploughs 

per 

1,000 

acres 

Total number 

Total 

number 

Density 

per 

sq. mile 

Total 

number 

Number 

per 

1,000 

persons 

Carts 

Boats 

Sonarpur 

16,739 


4,284 

80 

72 

268 

166 

ProtapnaRor 

9,201 


1,682 

96 

129 

119 

133 

Bishnupur 

28,319 


6,369 

60 

94 

390 

1,145 

Baruipur 

30,199 

364 

6,268 

60 

114 

831 

136 

Magrahat 

63,661 

468 

8,749 

90 

116 

344 

604 

Falta 

22,307 

442 

4,407 

64 

116 

204 

20 

Diamond Harbour 

33,078 

494 

6,277 

66 

138 

188 

218 

Kulpi 

43,774 

406 

10,063 

90 

114 

114 

229 


The density of ploughs increases firom north to south, that of cart decreases 
from north to south. The density of boats is the minimum in the central 
part. The distribution of the live-stock is more or less miiform throughout 
the region (see Kgs. 19 to 23). 

6. Northern Plains of the Sundarbans 

The essential features of these plains have already been emphasized. 
South of Tald at Hasnabad or httle further south we get the first glimpse 
of the Sundarbans, which was put imder the plough not very long ago. No 
longer we see the frimiliar sight of compact villages under the cover of shady 
trees, but scattered hamlets in wide open country. A tidal creek here and 
a low mud embankment there may occasionally break the monotony of these 
plains (see Plate XIVA). The country has been deforested so ruthlessly 


















400 


B. C, LAW VOLUME 


that all the typical trees have almost gone. The farm lands are more extensive, 
and known as abads. Each abad bears its oAvn lot number. The scattered 
hamlets are slowly evolving into villages. The smaller villages have not yet 
been given any name. They are also Imown by their lot numbers. The 
Gobra hJuil issues out from the Jamuna near Hasnabad and flows parallel to^/ 
it for several miles before joining the Bidyadhari south of Sandeskhali. The 
low-lying eastern portion of the Hasnabad Plains drains into this kltal. It 
also serves as an important water-way, and provides sites for human settle- 
ments, which are slowly growing. In the Harua Plain a number of rivers 
locally known as gangs join each other, giving rise to a typical braided type 
of river system. They eventually form one channel and enter into the Payna 
abad (lot 62). Tliis abad, as its name indicates, used to be cultivated in the 
past, but ever since the embankments gave way they were not reconstructed 
with the result that the land got immdated and could not be cultivated any 
longer. In this way vast areas once reclaimed have reverted back to their 
original condition, thereby lowering the acreage under the plough. As for 
this particular abad and a few other abads like the Goabaria abad (lot 70) 
they were transformed into profitable fisheries and utilized as such. But 
there are numerous examples of rich cultivated fields losing their fertility 
and gradually becoming unproductive because of the neglect on the part of 
the landlord to maintain the embankments in proper order. The embank- 
ments get breached often, allowing brackish water to enter into the cultivated 
fields. The author could see the devastating effect of this at Amjhara a small 
village, opposite Port Canning. Here the villagers grow a poor crop of paddy, 
and no vegetables of any kind. The cattle are underfed, and graze on the 
stubbles of paddy after harvest (see Plate XIVB). The present embankment 
should be repaired, and another embankment is to be constructed to strengthen 
it. Moreover, at certain intervals the embankment should have brick- 
built sluice gates to drain out the interior fields. There was only one such 
sluice gate at the time the area was visited (see Plate XVA). The Bhangar 
Plain is intersected by a number of navigable canals, and contains compact 
villages unlike the central and eastern parts of the regions. There was a 
proposal to build a Grand Trunk Canal through the Bhangar Plain connecting 
Calcutta with the Hama Gang but the scheme did not materialize. Of the 
north-south flowing canals the Bidyadhari kkal is the most important. It 
connects the Hama Gang with the Bhangar kaia khal. About a mile west of 
this hhal occurs a group of bits, which runs from northeast to southwest, 
and was once continuous from the Calcutta marshes (salt-water lake) to the 
Bhubanpur marshes. Of this group the Kalinga and the Elada contain water 
throughout the year in their deeper parts. These represent an old river bed, 
which needs resuscitation. Enormous quantities of goalpaUa and Tiogla 
p^w in these marshes, which are extensively used for thatching purposes 
in various parts of the district (see Plate XVB). Further west occurs the low- 
lying Dhapa bil, from where enormous quantities of cabbages and cauli- 
flowers come to Calcutta market in winter. 








Pl/ATE II 


r 



A. View of a barrack of factory workers near Kankinara. (Note the dull appearance of 
the building, and its surroundings; tbe open space in front of the building is covered with low 
bushes, and gets muddy in the rain.) 



B. View of a canal near the Belgacliia bridge, Calcutta. (Note that the canal contains a 
number of barges which bring jute and paddy to Calcutta from the east.) 


Plate III 



A. View of a dying river. (It is the Jamtmo, which was once an active river. Note that 
the river lias shrunk considerably and now contains some stagnant water onlj' in the middle. 
The bed has been partitioned by bamboo poles, establisliing fishing rights of individuals. A 
canoe and the last bamboo pole in the right mark the edge of water on one side. The surface of 
water is not visible except at one place because of the covering of water hyacinth.) 



B. Typical granary in the countryside. (Note the two tjTpes. One is thatched with rice 
straw, the other with corrugated tin sheet. Both are raised above the ground level. Paddy is 
stored in them.) 





Plate IV 











A. View of a marshland in the east of Calcutta. (Note a mud embankment in the fore- 
ground, which divides up the marsh into two blocks. Each block is nsed as a fishery. The 
Bhubanpur marsh is on the extreme right. The \-illngo of Bada in the background.) 




-“rr- ■'C 


B. ^ iow (if a hank of the Hnrua Gong near the village of Bakdoba. (Note that the river 
i« in vhh-tide, hence the canoe got stuck in the mud. Note ol.so the typical fisherman’s boat, 
and his .simple implements lying in the lioat and his fishing net drj’ing on the bank.) 






A. View of a concave bend of tlio Ichamati being eroded awn5'’ fast by the lateral erosion of 
the river. (This photograph was taken near Taki. An attempt has been made to stop this 
erosion, but with very little success.) 



B. Water hyacinth invading a tank at Taki. (Note the beautiful flowers.) 



Plate VII 



A. View of ft clmnning tj-pical farmhouse in the Southern Plains, north of Magrahat. 
(Note the olwracteristic vegetation; palm trees on the left ftml bamboo grove on the right. Tljere 
are sprouts of coconut palm in the foreground.) 



the background.) 










Plate IX 


A. Ploughing nn old bed of tho Ganges at Gobindapur near Baruipur. (Note that the 
plough is of wood. The bullocks do not look very strong, nor the cultivator.) 




B. View of an old bed of the Ganges near Baruipur. (Note that here the ground has been 

raised and manured to gi’ow vegetables.) 

C2 







Plate X 



A. View of the seme old bed of the Ganges further south. (Note that the dry bed is lying 
was e. road runs on the left and a railway in the background on the extreme right. These 
two occupying the two banks of the river, now extinct.) 





Plate XI 



A. View of a tank cxeavntod in tho bed of tho siltcd-iip Ganges near Bislmupur, (Note 
the clmrnctcristic vegetation. This tank is owned by one Ghosh and hence is known as Ghosh’s 
Ganges. It retains nil tho sanctity attached to tho Ganges.) 



B. A fishing device to catch fish that live in stognant water. (Note tho device to lift up 
water from tho lower tank, which hos become almost dry ond ready for a catch.) 



Plate XII 



A. View of tlie Kulpi canal oast of the main sluico gate. {Note that palm trees line the 
banks and fishe^^vomen are catching fish near the gate with the help of poliii.) 



background. Note that the trees are found standing in water because of high-tide.) 



Plate XIII 



A. View of a row of fine temples lining a tank at JajTingor. (Note the typical architecture 
of these temples. Theso arc not very old. The oldest one is on the OKtreme left.) 



B. Magrahat — an important rice exporting centre of Bengal. (Note the canal coming so 
near the railway station and affording cheap means of transport of paddy and rice.) 



Plate XIV 



A. A typical landscape in the Northern Plains of the Sundarbans. (Note the meandering 
river, which is really a canal originally used for drainage. It has been almost silted upi The 
countryside is almost bare of tree vegetation.) 



B. Cattle grazing on the stubbles of paddy plant after the harvest at Amjhara. (There 
is a dearth of good pasture land not only in this village, but practically everywhere in the district. 
Due to the alkalinity of the soil the stubbles get tarnished, becoming unfit for the consumption 
of cattle.) 




Xv 






iswrsr?-;--; • 


■nf 

- i.-j 

Ih" --p^ 


VT " fiJnic, 




• '3?r 


*“ «'” 





product Of th^ 



Plate XVI 



A. View of the lehamati at Hasnabad. (Note that the rivor meanders and is joined by a 
creek. There are two bridges at different levels, over the creek, the higher one being used in the 
rainy season when the water level rises. Note also the barges and tlie canoes laden %vith agricul- 
tural products.) 



B. View of the fish market at Hasnabad. (Note the pacldng boxes on the right and railway 
wagons under the central shed. Prom this market enormous quantities of fish are exported 
daily to Calcutta.) 











A. View of a port that could not develop for poor immediate hinterland. (There are no 
traces of the docks and jetties that were built along the ?datla at Pott Canning. Barges and 
steam Iniinches are to be seen today. Note that the river is in ebb-tide, and barges cariying 
fuel wood from the Sundarban forests.) 








B. View up the Matla from Port Canning. (Note in the background the two chimneys of 
rice mills, onlj' mills in this part of the district; a poor protective work along part of the embank- 
ment wliich got breached; in the centre of the picture there is a bhtri or fishery wliich is separated 
by a low mud embankment from the edge of the river at low-tide.) 

C3 




B. View of a bridge resting on bamboo poles in the reclaimed Sundarbans. (Note the 
bamboos in the foreground, with which the bridge was constructed. This bridge is already on. 
the breaking point and even a moderate traffic cannot pass over it.) 








xix 


'"® Pfeugh as yet^ X ^'‘’•^ of the ^ ® vie„. , 

’® ‘00 nar«>^ 



i». ;.' ■■ v.'i ;■ ■ ■•. '• ■':;»^ 



-■ ■ "-••Z.,''----v 








Plate XX 



A. View of a temple dominating the landscape for miles near Kulpi. {Note its architecture 
and compare with that of typical temples of Jaynagar. It is no longer used as temple and locally 
Icno^vn as Kulpi pagoda or Manibibi tomb. Note the characteristic grass vegetation which 
should be used as pastures.) 



B. View of mangrove vegetation at Kakdwip locally known as geon. (Note that this type 
of vegetation has roots above ground level and it approaches so near the river that its roots get 
submerged at high-tide.) 



71 ^ 


A. View of ft tj'pical farmhouse in the reclaimed Simdarbans. (Note that this house is 
neat in appearance and has ■walls of mud bricks arranged in a beautiful pattern. It is thatched 
with grass, obtained locally. The absence of dense vegetation near the house eharacterizes it 
from the t5'pe of farmhouses occurring in the densely populated plains of the district. Tlie farmer 
grows plantation trees in his garden attached to liis house.) 


B. Threshing of pulses by cattle at the farmhouse. (Note a stack of paddj’ straw in the 
background which is used for feeding cattle. Tlie bullocks are treading on the grains.) 

C4 




A. View of a tsrpical market place in. the reclaimed Sundarbans. (Note that the agricultural 
products, especially potatoes and other vegetables, ore the chief commodities sold here.) 



_ View of a temple at Kakdwip. (This is one of the oldest temples of Bengal and is 
dedicated to the Goddess Bishalakhi. The frontal part is of recent date. Note a stack of paddy 
straw in the foreground.) . ' 
















402 


B. O, LAW VOLUME 


Table "vyiT shows the distribution of the live-stock, ploughs, carts and 
boats in this region (see also the relevant figures). 

The density of population gradually increases from east to west. The 
two eastern plaias have 760 persons per square mile, whereas the Bhangar 
Plain has some 900 and the Bajarhat Plain 1,200, because of their proximity)^ 
to Calcutta. The linear pattern of population becomes more and more 
pronounced as one proceeds westward firom the eastern Bidyadhari (Bata- 
gachi Gang). Hasnabad is an important fish-exporting centre of Bengal. 
Boats laden with fish and forest products of the Sundarbans come to this 
important market town (see Plate XVIA). Prom the railway station a side line 
extends right up to the fi«b market on the Ichamati, so that there may not 
be any delay in despatchmg fish to Calcutta (see Plate XVIB). Bhangar is also 
an important trade centre dealing mainly with vegetables and poultry. Matla 
or Port Calming stands on the Matla. The attempt to develop Matla into 
a port failed because of the sparse population of this region. The forest 
products of Simdarbans, such as Goran, Dhondal and Gewa poles, fiiel wood 
and wax come to Canning first, and then transported to different parts of the 
district (see Plate XVIIA), are sold in Caiming market. On the Port Camung 
side runs an embankment along the river, which is paved with bricks in the 
town, but further north it is built of pressed mud. Such an embankment, 
when breached, is protected with bamboo thatching (see Plate XVHB). A 
portion of the river bed, which becomes dry at the low-tide, is enclosed by mud 
embankments and converted into bJieries or fisheries. 


The percentages of the cultivated lands vary between 66 and 74. It 
increases from west to east. The difference between the densities of popula- 
tion calculated on the basis of total and cultivated areas is greater in the two 
western plams than in the two eastern. The proportion of cultivable but not 
cultivated area is the least in the Hasnabad Plain, only 6 per cent of the total ' 
area. It is about the same in the remaining portion of the region. The 
percentage of the uncultmable area is the maYiTrHiTn in the Bhangar Plain. 
Of the crops grown in the region, aman is the most important. The percentage 
acreage under aman is well over 90 in the Ensnabad Plain, and ranges between 
82 and 86 in the Bajarhat and Harua Plains. It is the TniniTmTm in the 
Bhangar Plain. The per capita production of aman is very high. It is over 
14 maunds in Hasnabad, 11 matmds in Harua and little over 7 maunds in the 


two remaining areas. The Northern Plains of the Sundarbans, therefore, 
play large part in feeding the population of Calcutta. The Bhangar and 
Bajarhat Plains have also exportable surplus of fruits and vegetables. The 
other crops are not grown on large scale in this region. 


The density of ploughs ranges between 97 and 131, the number being 
less in the west than in the east. The two western thanas have also smaller 


nimbers of cattle, sheep and goats and carts. As to the density of boats, 
it is the highest in the Hasnabad Plain,' and the lowest in the Bajarhat Plain 
(see Table X XII and Kgs. 19 to 23), 

26 b 


LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OR 24-RAEGANAS, BENGAL 403 

tabi® xxn 


Dhtribution of Live-atocks, Phtigha, Carla and Boata in the Northern Plaina of the Sundarbana 


Tlunias 

Live-. 

Cattle 

3TODK 

Sheep and goats 

Ploughs 

per 

1,000 

seres 

Total Nmnber 

Total 

number 

Density 

per 

sq. mile 

Total 

number 

Number 

per 

1,000 

persons 

Carts 

Boats 

Hnsnabad 

01,800 

399 

16,782 

170 

m 

1,679 

817 

Harua 

41,818 


11,201 

144 

■Wil 

1,776 

419 

Bbangar 

35,843 

282 

10,888 

no 

■Ea 

1,525 

799 

Rojarhat 

11,993 

307 

2,929 

90 

H 

'620 

20 


6 . The Seclaimed Sundarbans 

The Sundarbana is named after its characteristic tree, Sundri {Heritiera 
minor). The belt of the reclaimed Sundarbans rims from northeast to south- 
west. It is much wider in the west since in this part reclamation proceeded right 
up to the sea face. It is more easily accessible than the eastern part. One 
can go to Lakshmikantapur by train, and then proceed to Kakdwip by car. 
The road up to Kulpi is aU right, but beyond that is in a terrible state (Plate 
XV niA ). It is absolutely necessary to improve the Xakdwip-BLulpi portion 
of the Kulpi road, and until then no further development of this portion of 
region is possible. Just before reaching Kakdwip the road passes over a bridge, 
which during the time of the visit of the author’s party was almost on the 
brealdng point (Plate XVUIB). The roads are almost non-eristent in other 
portions of the reclaimed belt, excepting in the Basanti abad where it runs 
between Port Canning and Basanti, There exists a regular ferry service 
between Kakdwip and the Sagar island. A good metaUed road runs the whole 
length of this island. The absence of road is somewhat compensated by a 
network of tidal water-ways which run in all directions, though such means 
of transport is very slow. The most important of these water-ways, which 
is used by steamers proceeding to Assam from Calcutta, runs unfortunately 
through the forested Sundarbans lying fruiiher south (Mg. 1). 

There are four main problems which stand in the way of proper utilization 
of land in tliis region. The problem of providing easy and rapid means of 
transport is one. The drainage problem is another. Because of the low relief, 
the tendency of the land here is to get water-logged. It is true that a number 
of drainage nhannftls have been excavated, but most of them are too narrow 
to be of much use (Plate XIXA). Such drainage channels are to be widened 
and provided with sluice gates for regulating water. The problem of embank- 
ing cultivated fields so as to prevent the salt-water to get into them is the 
third. • Most of the embankments have been constructed without any plan, 
and do not serve the purpose now. They are too low to be of much use and 















404 


B. O. I 1 A.W VOLtTMB 


made of suoli flimsy materials that the salt-water can easily percolate through 
them (Plate XIXB). The scarcity of drinkable water constitutes the fourth 
problem. Here all the rivers carry salt-water unfit for drinldng and the 
inhabitants have to depend on rainwater preserved with considerable difficulty. 
The problem becomes very acute in summer, when all the ponds contaming 
fresh water dry up. 

The vegetation in the northern part of the region now mainly consists 
of low grasses and slirubs, the tree vegetation almost disappearing. In the 
midst of such a grass-land rises a conspicuous structure near Rulpi, winch is 
now deserted. It looks lilte a temple, but is Icnomi locally as Knlpi pagoda 
or Manibibi tomb (Plate XXA). Nearer the tidal rivers grows mangrove 
vegetation with their roots above the ground (Plate XXB). 

A greater part of the Sundarban abads is cultivated by seasonal workers, 
who come mainly from the Midnaporo district of Bengal, and return homo after 
sowing and transplanting rice. Hence, during the growing season large areas , 
of rice field are left without a trace of human habitation. But in the south- 
western part the cultivators have settled near their farm land. They have 
built nice hamlets, built of dried mud bricks arranged in a characteristic 
pattern, and thatched the roof with thatching grasses obtained locally. The 
thorny leaves of date-palm serve as a fence, and are stuck in mud walls wlxich 
surround the hamlet. There are very few trees surrounding the hamlets as in 
the Southern Plains (Plate XXIA). They use their cattle for threshing pulses 
and other grains (Plate XXIB). 

The population is very much scattered all over the region, thus necessitat- 
ing the holding of small hats at convenient places. The agricultural products 
of the region and the daily necessities of life of the formers are sold in these 
markets (Plate XXTI A). Centres of dense population are non-existent in 
this region. Kakdwip is an important village, doing brisk trade in agricultural 
products of the Sundarbans. One of the oldest temples of Bengal is found in 
this village, which speaks of its former glory (Plate XXHB). 

Table XX I II shows the nature of land utilization, and a very hig h degree* 
of self-sufficiency in aman (see also the sketch-maps). 

The density of population varies between 201 and 623. The apparent 
higher densities in Sandeshkhali, Canning, Jaynagar and Mathurapur ore due 
to the fact that parts of the Southern Plains and the Northern Plains of the- 
Sundarbans have been included within those areas. The percentage of area 
under cultivation is the highest in Xakdwip, 73, and ranges between 63 and 
69 in other parts. The density of population per square mile of cultivated 
area is almost twice that of total area in all the thanas. The percentage of ^ 
culturable but not cultivated area is the highest in Mathurapur, 24, and 
little over 10 in the remaining plains. About one-third of the area is uncul- 
turable in the eastern part. In the remaining portion it comes to about 
one-fifth of the total area. Nothing but aman is cultivated in this region, 
hence the expoitable surplus is the highest in the whole of the district. The 
per capita production of aman rice is 20 maunds or over in the four of the six 



Land Utilization in the Reclaimed Sundarbans 




























406 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 




LAND UTILIZATION IN THE DISTRICT OT 24-TABGANAS, BBNOAL 407 

thanas. Since the agricultural workers bring their own ploughs from their 
home districts the number of ploughs per 1,000 acres is below 100 in aU but one 
thanas. The density of live-stock is pretty low, considering the abundance of 
pastures. The density of carts is pretty low throughout the region, being 
^he lowest in the western part. Ih such a region the density of boats should 
have been much higher than what it is (see Table XXIV and Kgs. 19 to 23). 


Tabi® XXIV 

Distribution of Live-stock, Ploughs, Oarts and Boats in the Beelaimed Sundarbans 


* 

Tliflnas 

Lwe-i 

Cattlo 

3TOOE 

Sheep and goats 

Ploughs 

per 

1,000 

acres 

Total number 

Total 

number 

Density 

per 

sq. Qule 

Total 

number 

Number 

per 

1,000 

persons 

Carts 

Boats 

Sandoaliklinli 


239 

13,955 

140 

66 

1,292 

502 

Canning 


272 

14,735 

135 

77 

1,657 

458 

Jaynagar 


285 

13,086 

130 

90 

689 

1,123 

Mivthuropur 

85,198 

267 

12,107 

120 

86 

369 

464 

Kokdvip 

52,422 

318 

8,626 

135 

107 

34 

249 

Sogar 


223 

3,311 

90 

79 

8 

141 


Conclusion 

To sum up, the Upper Hooghly Plain is deficient in food supplies, and 
hence local labour is to be employed in the mills and fr,ctories as &r as possible. 
Truck farming on a large scale is also to be encomaged. 

The Plains of Amdanga-Sarupnagar and the Barasat-Basirhat Plains 
produce enough rice to satisfy local needs. These constitute the jute and aus- 
produoing regions of the district. Irrigation and drainage are the main 
problems. Resuscitation of the Padma, the Jamuna and various other 
streams now completely silted up, is necessary. The Northern Plaius of the 
Sundarbans produce more paddy than what is needed in the region. An 
improvement of the means of transport and the maintenance of embankments 
in proper order are necessary. The reclaimed Sundarbans is the chief grain 
supplying region of the district. It has yet considerable possibilities for agri- 
cultural development provided the four problems of transport, embankment, 
potable water, and drainage, with which the mhabitants of the regions are 
confronted today, be solved. 

The author now wishes to express his thanks to his colleagues. Dr. B. N. 
Mukerjee, Mx. D. R. Mtra, Mr. K. Bagchi and Mr. B. N. Ganguli for parti- 
cipating in the fi el d work. His special thanks are due to his former students, 
Mr. .Birendranatili Ganguli, 3VCr. Puma Chandra Chakravorti, hSx. Subodh 

















408 


B. 0. BAW VOIiBME 


Chaadra Bose and Miss Binapani Dasgupta. Mr. B. N. Gangnli was entrusted 
with, the photographic work, and had taken most of the photographs illustrating 
this paper, the rest were taken by the author himself. He also assisted the 
author in many ways from the start of the survey till the writing out of this 
paper. Mr. Chakravorti and Miss Dasgupta were entrusted with the soil> 
analysis work and analyzed the soils mechanically, kir. Subodh Chandra 
Bose determined the ^jH values of the soils and had drawn the population 
map tmder the direction of the author. 


THE SIGNIFICANCE OF NEGATION IN HINDU PHILOSOPHICAL 

THOUGHT 

By 

Da. Betty HjsrMAinj 

In India everything is religion, thus runs the general slogan. Perhaps 
one has to modify tins statement, or rather to amplify it. Every religion is 
based on the presupposition of a world-view which has two aspects. Here on 
earth everything is transitory, relative and imperfect, while somewhere 
beyond there exists as a postulate something perfect with aU the various 
predicates of the Absolute. Thus the religious man, everywhere in the world, 
lives on two levels simultaneously. La India this continuous double attitude 
pervades also all the spheres of knowledge, not only religion. 

Why, then, can this statement be applied also to our subject in hand, 
the extraordinarily frequent use of negation ? 

Negation presupposes in itself a double aspect: it denies something 
formerly known, and is as such in a higher sense also a positive statement, 
that of a counter-position. 

There are sixteen recognized schools dealt with m the medieval Indian 
history of philosophical systems written by the Vedantin Madhava. The 
first, which means the worst, is the school of the Materialists, i.e. those who 
try to oppose the generally accepted doctrine of the existence of a transcen- 
dental world. As such they proclaim: ‘tmj para' there is nothing (what you 
all accept) beyond. Here the negation is used to assert a one-sided view. 
Only one counter-position is accepted, it is the negation of a positive statement 
(para) the existence of which is, in some way or other, acknowledged by aU 
the other schools of Hindu thought. 

The second system according to Madhava is that of the Buddhists, still 
far away from the best and ultimate. Some of the Buddhist schools are the 
Nastikas, the so-called Nihilists. They take once more a one-sided view, but 
this time from the reverse angle. For them this whole empirical world does 
not actually exist. The ’para-asti’, the Beyond is the only Eeal, or at any 
rate the only permanent reality. Other Buddhist schools do not go so far as 
to deny everything empirical altogether. It is true that, for instance, the 


THE SIGNUTIOANOE OF NEGATION IN HINDU PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 409 

Vijnam-Vadins do not accept the reality of the external world, nor that of 
internal experiences, but there still exists for them an empirical Positive, 
the reservoir out of which our senses take their starting-point and into which 
our experiences flow : the dlaya (abode) of vijfiS/no, (consciousness) is for them 
%e actual worldly reality. Our empirically working intellect is a positive 
factor in this world beside the transcendental positive — the world beyond. 
All other Buddhist schools keep to the assumption that the true reality, that 
is the constant reality, is in the Transcendental, while whatever happens in 
this world can only have a transitory momentary existence {Ksamt). Thus 
all Buddhists are Ksana-Vadins. In the case of the Buddhist dogmatics, 
therefore, the negation is used to deny something which is without question 
accepted as positive by the average man’s experience, the HEBE. 

The Advaita Vedantins, the last and highest system of orthodox TTiriHn 
thought, also work with negations in consequence of the fundamental double 
view. Their highest transcendental principle is the Brahman. The whole 
empirical world is an outflow of tliis transcendental reservoir which provides 
the material and, at the same time, the spiritual basis of all phenomena. We 
thus see that for them the interconnection between the Here and the Beyond 
is never questioned nor separated. It is assumed that there is not only an 
independent co-existence between both levels, but, furthermore, an iuter- 
connected co-existence. If now these Vedantins also have to make use of 
negations, then not one side is questioned or entirely negated in its reality; 
both are real, but of diSerent grades of value and reality. The negation 
used has here but the significance of a limitation. The formula of these 
Vedantins for the divine qualities of the highest Brahman is its predicates of 
Sat-Git-Ananda (absolute Being, absolute Consciousness, and absolute Bliss). 
Apart from these three absolute qualities, all farther definitions or applications 
of distinct qualities are to be negated. Hence the famous statement that 
Brahman is NA-ITI, Na-Iii (It is not thus [only], it is not thus [only]). 
All our empirical definitions (i.e. limitations) take away the all-embracing 
vagueness, productivity and potentiality of the Absolute which is represented 
in Brahman alone. Here the negation is used for remoting from the Trans- 
cendental any limitation as presented in all, even the highest, empirical 
qualifications and individualizations. 

Another use of negation belongs to the same sphere of transcendental- 
empirical intercoimection. If, for instance, ^anhara, the advocate of complete . 
identification between Atman and Brahman, advances the theory of the 
A-Dvaitam, the non-duality between the individual and the muversal Soul, 
he uses the negation as a strong affirmation that no duality whatever (wrongly 
supposed by some other thinkers) can in any way exist. Here the negation 
is a refutation of an otherwise assumed but — for him wrongly assumed 
theory of separation between the Whole and its parts. 

The A-drato, the invisible, is a generally accepted postulate of something 
positive which is beyond the range of our eyes. As such the physicists assume 
a substance immeasurably small and immeasurably great, both beyond the 



410 


B. 0. LAW VOLT7MK 


limited capacity of our perception. Tlioir A~df§ta- is material, the atom on 
the one side and the immense ether on the other. 

Other systems, in accordance with their aim of research, see their invisible, 
hut concrete, postulate either in Fate or in effect not yet reached, etc. Tlio 
negative expression designates something positive beyond the positive > 
phenomenon. Negation and position, both are positive, but both of a different 
type. 

Other kinds of negation are not full negations, but only limitations. 
Firstly, the negation of permanence throughout all stages of time. Tlio main 
term of the Sanldiya system is the A-Vyal:la, the Not-yet- or No-raore-manifost 
(Vy-akta, lit. the curved-apart). A-Vyakta is the potential reservoir of all 
empirical things out of which they all arise and into which they are all re- 
absorbed, but which in itself can be only deduced from its middle stage, the 
manifestations. 

Another aspect of limitation, expressed by negation, seems to underlie 
the cardinal term of A-Yidya. The whole world of ours is only A-Yidyd, 
Non-knowledge, as it is generally translated. 

But how, then, can come out of the A-Vidya the Vidyd reached in libera- 
tion, and how then could the A-Vidya arise out of the pro-empirical Vidyal 
Two reasons speak against this assumption. Firstlj', one of the main dogmas 
of Indian thought is that nothing gets lost (after primary Vidya) and that out 
of nothing (empirical A-Vidya) cannot arise something later on (final Vidya). 
Secondly, the Vedantins, who preferably apply the term A-Vidya, maintain 
the uninterrupted interconnection and relation between this world and the 
Brahman of which the phenomena are a part only, not the Whole. Therefore, 

I venture to propose, in accordance with the similes constantly’ used, that the 
worldly, so-called Non-loxowlcdgo is only a veiled and dimmed Vidyd. !Eenco 
A-Vidyd may bo translated as ‘incomplete* or ‘imperfect* knowledge, stained 
by our empirical experience. A-Vidyd, therefore, seems to imply not a full 
negation, but only a limited negation. 

And now for the significance of double negations. Double negations 
are used in the Upanisads and the Bhagavadgita in a similar sense. The 
divine vagueness and width of the Highest is maintained in predicating the 
Brahman not only with a positive quality and not only with its negative 
counterpart, but through the negation of any eminrical quality and its 
opposite. Positive and negative, both are one-sided and. therefore a negation 
of both empirical counterparts, shall suggest the all-embracing unlimited 
divine capacity. Or, a negation of a negation is applied to indicate something 
that is more than a plain emphasized positive statement and is more than 7 
a corroborated qualification through double negation which as such would 
also still belong to the world of our limited definitions. 

From the logical angle the polar negation means inclusion of both counter- 
parts. It is characteristic of Indian logic that not only the JBhdva, (Being), 
ut also the A-Ehdva, (Non-Being) is attempted to be proved by a positive 
ogica process. The standard example is the non-pot on a place where wc 



THE SIGNIEIOANOE OF NEGATION IN HINDU PHILOSOPHIOAI, THOUGHT 411 

were accustomed to see a pot; we now find there the absence of the pot by 
exactly the same process of perceiving. As such A-BMva (Non-Being) is in 
a way as positive as the Bliavct. The Naiyayikcis are tme Ontologists, seekers 
for the two correlated principles, the Being and Non-Being, not only concerned 
>vith ‘Being’ and empirical beings, but with the positive and negative sides 
as interrelated general principles. 

One of the fundamental dogmas of Hindu thought is that of identification 
or, at any rate, similarity, between macro- and micro-cosmic parts of the 
Universe. I may venture to try and give an explanation firom this angle 
of the ambiguous word ‘Na' in the ?,gveda. It is still an unsolved problem 
how in the i^gveda the very same word ‘Na* can assume the meaning of a 
pure negation and, besides, that of a comparison (= iva). If one does not 
want to take the easy way out to accept the unlikely falling-together of two 
unrelated words of exactly the same formation in the Ilgvedic ‘Na’, one has 
to consider whether the veiy same word ‘Na* can perhaps also take the 
significance of a comparison. 

It may well be that the unexpected meaning of ‘No’ as a comparison is 
based on the general presupposition of identification between the different 
parts of the Universe, and that the negation in this case would only refer to 
a complete identification, but still implies the possibility of a positive- 
negative statement of similarity. Here the negation would then be used in 
the sense of a limited identification. ' 

Besides the examples of negations given above, expressed by static logical 
terms a- and na, the dynamic trend of the Hindu thought preferably indicates 
negation by other prefixes like vi, nir and ati, or sama. 

Ni (corresponding to Latin dfs) expresses negation in the sense of trans- 
formation, i.e. dispersion of the former shape, but not an actual polar counter- 
position. Sometimes instead of a mere prefix full verbal forms are used like : 
vita, gone away, or fie, gone. This is in accordance with the basic Hindu 
thought that nothing empirical remains imchanged in its conditions, though 
in its being. Everything is in continuous transition from generation to 
destruction and vice versa. However, not always vi, vita or rte indicate the 
fill! way of approach to the polar opposite, but stops short somewhere on the 
stages between. 

As to the prefix Nir, it expresses the same idea of transformation, but 
yet in a stronger way of dispersion in a kind of e:q)losive manner (cf. Nirvana, 
the blown asunder). The prefix Ati has not a dispersive meaning, but plainly 
indicates transgression in the sense of ‘beyond’. As such it is used, for mstance, 
in the term \ati~jana’, lit. beyond human beings, for an empty spot where there 
is nobody, but where there might have been somebody or may be soinebody 
in the future. 

Thfe prefix Sama, on the other hand, has the peculiar meaning of combining 
,the opposites and negating both of them. Eor instance, Sama-suTchaduh- 
ldiam\ lit. where fortune and misfortune are lying together, expresses some- 



412 


B. 0. LAW VOLTJME 


which is indififerent towards those opposites and in this way gives the 

negation of both, position and counter-position. 

There are other means, too, to express a full negation, limited negation 
of indifferontiation. The greatest philosophical achievement of the other- 
wise less philosophically, and more practically, minded Jains is tlio so-called^ 
‘8y5d-vada\ the assertion of the ‘may bo*. In the five-fold, or seven-fold, 
members of the ‘Sijad-vada’ the various conditions of things are either stated 
as limited negations (that what is now and has not been in the past and will 
not be in the future), or there are negations in the sense of correlative exclusion 
or inclusion. 

Another form of negation is used in the sphere of theological thinking. 
It is implied in the dual, or multiple, combination of the names of several 
deities, for instance, in the i^gveda. Indra is addressed together with the 
second main God os Indra-Varunau or Varuna is venerated together with 
Mitra as Miira-Varimau. Or else, Indra and Varuna or Agni are praised 
together with the 'Viive-devas\ the All Gods. Here in the apparently 
positive statement an inner negation is expressed. It is the fundamental 
law of Hindu thought that no uniqueness of any individual form, even of a 
Gk)d, is sufficient to express the absolute Divine. The dual, or rather the 
plural form of deities serves to indicate that no single ‘Ho* and no single ‘She* 
can completely represent the Absolute. Only the ‘It*, undifferentiated as 
it is, the Ne-uter, can embrace all individual forms. It is noteworthy that 
even in the so-called later monotheistio forms of Hinduism, the one God who 
is adored is only an * Isfa-devaid’ , a chosen, a favoured doit 5 ^ Selection pre- 
supposes existence of a choice, of more than one given possibility. 

Negation has not always to be expressed by a negative form of a former 
positive statement. The negation can lie in the very verb itself. For instance, 
the dissolution of all individual forms in the final re-absorption of Liberation 
is significantly called 'Pra-laya', the melting-together into the super-personal 
reservoir. On the other hand, a negative term lilce '^iinya' or ‘Abhva' can 
contain a transcendental positive statement. Ahhva means the immense, 
the counter-position to the *bhva' (from root hlvd, to become). It is beyond 
the range of the continuously changing empirical being. Sdnya, most 
probably fi:om the very same root as Sana, excessive, means similarly some- 
thing beyond the limited empirical shape. As such Ahhva and l^unya indicate 
a positive something, not a nothing, but not a single thing. 

In a way there lies in India’s fundamental concepts of productive ambi* 
gmty also a kind of implicit negation, the negation of one-sided fixation. 
It is no accident that terms like 'Varna’, 'Khyd’, etc. embrace more than 
one sense perception. Farm means: colour and sound; hhyd is: to see and 
to say. 

Other possibilities of expressing such kind of ambiguity are provided, 
for instance, in terms like ‘Dharrm’. It means ‘fibsed position*. But aU 
fi^ed positions are, in true Hindu manner, if valid, not one-sidedly fixed. 
Bharrm has a double aspect, a subjeotive and objective one, and as such, 



sahvasvSea 


41S 


in a way, a positive and negative angle. DJuiTma implies duty and right, 
obligation of maintaining one’s own right and that of others as well. Here 
the implicit negation is given through mutual limitation. 

There are also other kinds of implicit negation, expressed, for instancei 
in Sahkhya thought. Theoretically position and counter-position are given, 
hut actually only one of them is active. I think of the two principles, of 
Matter and Spirit, of Prahrti and Puru§a. Both are assumed for the trans- 
cendental sphere, but in reality only the one, i.e. Prakrti, is active, while the 
Purusa merely indirectly stimulates Prahrti to display her productive powers 
through her manifestations. In the sphere of empirical functions it is not a 
full negation, but only a partial obstruction is assumed for the activities of the 
one principle, i.e. for the Purusa. 

And now a last subdivision of negation, once more implied in a kind of 
ambiguity. It is not only an artistic, but a general necessity of Hindu 
thought that the Indians so frequently apply in their poetry and in their 
religious literature the means of l^lesas, intertwinmgs of meaning, a kind of 
pun.. Ambiguous expression represents the value of more than only one 
possibility of meaning. 

To conclude ; the use of negations is in India employed not only as a logical 
means, but as a necessary expression of a basic double view of transcendental 
and empirical duality. Therefore we can trace in Sanskrit more varied and 
subtle shades of negations than in any other language. 

However, not a fundamental negative tendency in India’s religious and 
philosophical thought can be deduced from it. On the contrary, negations 
serve to show India’s fundamental outlook that more than one position is 
always possible and operative. 


SAEVASVARA 
(Is IT SaevamSdha ?) 

By 

Dewan Bahadttb. Db. S. Keishnaswash AiyAHOAE, M!.A., 

Ph.D., F.R.A.S.B. 

It is generally known that in the preliminary part of the drama Mrccha- 
katiica, there occurs the 41oka describing the life-work of the author 6udraka, 
which broadly states that, having received the education prescribed for 
princes and securing thereby, by God Siva’s favour, a clear vision and a noble 
outlook as a result of that education, he ruled long happily, had the good 
fortune to see his own son installed on the throne, performed the Ahamedha 
sacrifice productive of much spiritual good. It is ftirther said that he attained 
to the ripe age of 100 years increased by 10 days. Kin g Sudraka then en- 
tered the fire, as a glorious culmination of a life of achievement.! 

! !u,s;«hlsfv I Mrcchal-atika I. 4. 



414 


B. C. LAW VOLTTME ■ 


I am not proposing to disonss whether ^udraka wrote this ^oka or some- 
body else, whether the whole of the introduction is posthumous or whether 
we could regard it as having been written by ^udraka himself. These axe 
questions that have been much discussed, though it may he that no generally 
accepted conclusions have perhaps been arrived at. What I am concerned'^ 
with in this note is the statement in the last line of the sloka that, after the 


glorious achievement through a long life, iSudraka threw himself into the fire. 
There is a parallel instance of a Maukhari king entering the fire, and other 
kings putting an end to their lives by entering the water in holy rivers or holy 
bathing ghats. The statement here that a king full of achievement should 
enter the fire, rules out suicide of whatever kind. Has it any special signi- 
ficance? One of the commentators on the drama calls this performance 
Sarvasvara. 

My enquiry as to the meaning of the term Sarvasvara failed to get a reply; 
as far as my search went, no dictionary or encyclopaedia accessible to me,, 
seems to explain the term. There is an iUumiaating comment by one com- 
mentator on ^udraka’s drama that this act of entering into the fire was 
similar to that of Bishi ^arabhanga, who, according to the Bamayana, gave 
up the body, limb by limb, by offering it as an oblation into the fire, and that 
his soul thereafter passed to Heaven, soon after Bama had visited him. The 
Bamayana commentator does not seem to offer any explanation of this, or 
give a special name to the kind of sacrifice darabhanga made. From the context 
and the maimer of description in the 41oka it would seem inappropriate to 
describe it as suicide by fire, as in feet it would be in the case of ^arabhanga 
where the attendant circumstances make it clearly impossible to coimt it 
suicide, ^arabhanga’s performance seems to partake of the well-known 
performance of good souls, offering the body into the fire as oblation and as- 
cending to Heaven. Did Sudraka emulate that example ? 

Whatever that be, ^udraka’s performance which, one commentator at 
any rate, describes by the term Sarvasvara, does not appear to explain itself. 
Is it what is called Sarvamedha? The Mahabharata in the preliminary 
chapter to Santi Parva refers to the sacrifices generally performed as reducible 
to three principal ones as the most important among them, namely, Bajasuya, 
Aivamedha and Sarvamedha. Is this Sarvamedha equivalent of Sarvasvara, 
the sacrifice made by Sudraka and possibly that by Bishi ^arabhanga ? i 


^ The S'roitto Sutras, however, mention these two sacrifices in different contexts and clearly 
distinguish between them.— E.g. {Kdtydyana, XXH, 184); 

{Kdtydyana, KSl, 10). Also, vids Baudhdyana, XXTV, 11 on Ed. 


7 



THE B?,HANNANDIKE6vARA AND THE NANDIKESVARA 

PUBANA 

By 

Dr. B. C. Hazra, M.A., Ph.D. 

I 

The Bj'Jiannandikedvara Upapurana is mentioned, a-long with the 
Nandilcedvara-p. (also called Nandihara-p. and Nandikeia-p.) i in the lists of 
Upapui’anas given in the Br1iaddharma~p. and the Ekamra-p. In the former 
work it is called ‘ BfliannandUvara\ and in the latter, ‘ BrJiannandi’ The 
list of Upapuranas, ascribed to the Kurma-p. in Baghunandana’s Malamasa- 
iailva and in the Sabda-kalpadruma, mentions the ‘ Nandikedvara-yugma’ (i.e. 
two Nandikeivaras), which Ka4irama Vacaspati, in his commentary on the 
Malamdm-tattva, takes to mean the Brhanrumdikeivara-p. and the Nandi- 
kedvara-p.^ In one of the two lists of Upapurapas given by H em fl/iri in 
Cahirvarga-cintdmani, the alternative reading ‘ nftnflikftR vn,Tn,-yn gTna.Tn ca’ 
for ‘caturtham sivadliarmakhyam’ is found in some hlSS.^ So, it seems that 
it was only at a comparatively late date that an attempt began to be made 
to raise the Nandikedvara-p. and the BrJiannandikeivara to a position of 
authority and antiquity by thrusting their names even into the established 
list of Upapmapas. 

As the Bfhannandikedvara is drawn upon in Gadadhara’s Kahmra, 
Baghunandana’s JDurgapujd-tattva, and ^ulapani’s Durgotsava-viveka, and 
is mentioned, along with the Nandikedvara-p., only in the Ekdmra-p. and 
the Bfhaddharma-p., and as Jimtitavahana mentions neither the Nandi- 
kedvara-p. nor the Brhannandikedvara in the section on Durga-puja in his 
Kalaviveka, it must have been written earlier than 1000 A.D. but most probably 
not before 850 A.D. 

The facts that it is only the authors of Bengal and OrissaS who are found 
to have first recognized the Nandikedvarap. and the Briumnandikedvara as 
Upapuranas and utilized the contents of these two works in their Mbandhas, 
and that the method of Durga-puja, given in these two Upapuranas, is followed 
only in Bengal,® show that these two Upapurapas must have been written in 
this province. 


^ For information about the Nandikeivara-p. Bee tbe next eection. 

- Bfhaddliarma-p, {VafigavasS ed.) I, 26, 24. Ekdmra-p, (Dacca University MS. No. 4492), 
fol. 26. 

3 Malamasa-tattva (ed. Candicarana SmrtibhuBana), p. 213 — ^nandikeSvarayugmaip b]^ban- 
nandikeSvarapuranain nandikeivarapurapain ca. 

* Oaturvarga-eintdmavi, H, i, p. 21. See also ABORT, XXI, p. 42. 

3 Of the Smrti-TiTiters of Orissa, it is only GadSdbara ndio is found to quote two verses 
firom the Brhannandikeivara-p, in bis BSlasdra, pp. 151-2. 

3 It is only the Smjti-wiiters of Bengal who are found to utilize the contents of the 
Nandikeivara-p. and the Bfhannandikeivara in coimection with Durga-puja. Gadadhara’s 
quotation from the Bfhannandikeivara relates to tbe time of Narayana’s assumption of the form 
of the Boar, and not to Durga-puja. Moreover, there is a priests’ manual called Bfhannandi- 


416 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


As regards the contents of the Bf 7 ian 7 iandikeivara-p, we hnow almost 
nothing. In his Durga^uja-fattva, p. 8, Raghunandana quotes 26 metrical 
lines, in which Devi (i.e. Durga) herself speaks to someone (Nandikesvaral), 
addressed as ‘putraka’ and ‘nara-pungava’, on the method and the results 
of her own worship in the month of Asvina. According to those verses, oi^ 
which some are found quoted in ^ulapani’s Durgotsava-viveka, an earthen 
image of Devi is to be worshipped for three days from the Sapt'ami to the 
Navami Tithi during the bright half of A4vina. On the Saptami Tithi the Nava- 
putrika is to bo constituted with different plants named in a verse, and wor- 
shipped. On the Astami Tithi, Devi’s great bath (mahasnana) is to be 
performed with different articles (viz. the five products of cows, holy waters 
of the Ganges and the different holy places, waters into which certain herbs, 
gems, flowers, etc. have been thrown, and so on), this rite being attended with 
vocal and instrumental music as well as dancing (gita-vaditra-nrtyena); and 
the deity is to be worshipped with the offer of different articles as well as 
of jet-black he-goats, buffaloes, etc. and with the performance of ‘homa’. 
On the Navami Tithi also, Devi is to be worshipped specially with the offer 
of animals and the performance of vocal and instrumental music as weU as 
other kinds of merry-making. 

In his Durgdpujd'tattva, p. 3, Raghunandana quotes the following four 
verses with the mention of the ‘ Nandikehara-p.* as their source : — 
nau-yanair nara-yanair va nitva bhagavatim sivam / 
sroto-jale praksipeyafi lodda-kautulca-mangalaih // 
parair nal?§ipyate yas tu param nalcsipate tu yafi / 
tasya rusta bhagavati iapam dadyat sudarunam // 

and 

rk§a-yoganurodhena ratrau patri-prave&inam / 
visarjanatn vacayed yah sarastrafi sa vinasyati // 
bhagavatyah prave^adi-visargantaS ca yah kriyafi / 
tithav udayagaminyam sarvas tab karayed budhah// 

All these verses are again quoted by him on p. 44 but are ascribed to the 
' Brhanriandikeivara-p.’ Sulapani also quotes the first two verses in his 
Durgotsavorviveka, p. 24, and ascribes them to the Brhajiriandikeivara-p, But 
this ascription to the Bfhannandikedvara-p. must be wrong, because (1) in these 
verses Devi is not the speaker, and (2) the third verse is quoted as from 
‘N andi-p.’^ in Durgotsava-viveka, p. 8, and the fourth verse is ascribed to the 
Nandikeivara-p. in Sulapani’s Durgotsava-viveka, p. 9 and Vdsanti-viveka, 
p. 28. The fine ‘bilva-patrair ghrtaktaiS ca tila-dhanyadi-sam 3 rutaib.’ is 
ascribed to the Nandikeivara-p. in Durgapvjd-tattva, p. 38, but to the 
BrTmrvmndikehara in Durgotsava-viveka, p. 22. 


keivarapurS^okta-diirgSpujapaddhati, of which all the MSS. hitherto discovered belong to Bengal 
and are written in Bengali characters. See footnote 2 for information ahont these MSS. 

1 In the Dacca University MSS. Nos. 938D, 1642, 2116A (dated 1746 Saka) and 4332 (dated 
1763 Saka) of the Dttrgotaam-vivcka this verse is ascribed to the 'Nandi-p.' 



417 


THE BRHANNANDIKE^VARA AND THE NANDIKE^VABA PXJBSNA 

Though no tract on Vrata, Mahaitnya, etc. is found to claim to be a part 
of the Brhannandikehara-p., tliere are MSS. of an anonymous Smrti-work 
called BrJiannandikedvarapuranokfa-durgapujapaddhaii.^ 


It has already been said that the Nandikeivara-p. (also called Nandiivara-p. 
and Nandikda-p,) 2 is mentioned, along with the Brhannadikedvara, in the 
lists of Upapuranas contained in the EI:amra-p. and the Brhaddharma-p., 
that in the ^abda-kalpadruma and in Eaghunandana’s Malamam-iaiiva a list 
of Upapuranas has been given from the ‘Eurma-p.‘ with the mention of the 
' Nandikdmra-yugma\ and that in Gaiurvarga-ciniamani H, i, p. 21, there is a 
list of Upapuranas in which the ‘ Nandikdvara-yvgma* is found mentioned in 
place of the &ivad1iarma in some of its MSS. So, the Nandikdvara-p. cannot 
possibly claim an early origin. As this Upapurapa is mentioned in the 
Ekamra-p. and the Brhaddharma-p. and is drawn upon in the Sarnvatsara- 
pradlpa and in Kamalakarabhatta’s Nirnayasindhu, Govindananda’s Varsa- 
kaumudi, Eaghunandana’s Tithi-iattva, Ahnika-tatlva, Jyotis-tattva, ETcddail- 
iattva and Durgapujd-tattva, and Sulapani’s Durgotmva-viveka and Fosonff- 
viveka, as lUitra Mi^ra, who lived far away from Bengal, not only draws upon 
it but also describes it as a work of wide acceptance (mahajana-parigrhita),^ 
I and as it must have preceded the Brhannandikdvara (of which the very title 
is indicative of a comparatively late date and which must have been written 
earlier than 1000 A.D.<), it cannot bo dated later than 950 A.D. It is highly 
probable that this Upapurana was composed between 850 and 950 A.D. 
Such a late date for tliis Upapurana is supported not only by its non-mention 
in the section on Durga-puja in Jimutavahana's Kalaviveka but also by the 
fact that the method of Durga-worship given in it had Tantrio elements.^ 


I Havaprasad Shostri, Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS., ASB, HI, p. 836, No. 2828. 
Hrishiko^ Shnstri and Sivachandra Gui, Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS. in the Calcutta 
Sanskrit College, H, p. 309, No. 334 (‘a vory old ’ MS.). Dacca University MSS. Nos. 2261 (modem 
and incomploto) and 4056 (worm-eaten, and misdng eomo of its folios; dated 1678 ^aka). In 
the Dacca University MSS., the work is called 'BrhannandikeSvarapuraganugrhVa-hhavigya- 
puragokla-durgapUfapaddhatV. 

It should bo mentioned hero that all these MSS. are written in Bengali characters. 

s Tlio VodgnvusT od. of the Bfhaddharma-p. (I, 26, 24) names the Nandikeioara-p. as 
'Nandth-ara-p.'; the ASB. ed. ond the Dacca University MS. No. 4199 (fol. 71b) mention it as 
‘Nandikcia-p.’i and the Dacca University MSS. Nos. 319 (fol. 44a) ond 4649 (fol. 96o) it as 
'Nandikeivara-p.' In Sarpvalsara-pradipa, fol. 47b, a verse is quoted from the 'NandtSvara-p.' 

3 Vira-mitrodaga, Faribho^.praka^, pp. 14.16 — 

matsyo — ' a^tfidoSabhyas tu p^thah pviranam yat tu drSyate/ 

vijnnldhvaip dvija-Src^^lius tad etebhyo vinirgatam//’ vinirgatam 

samudbhutam/ yatha mahajana.parigrhIta.nandikeSvarapuran5dipurapa.devIpara. 
n&dlii saiplr^pal;/ 

* See under Brhannandike£vara-p, above. 

s Varsa~kaumudi, p. 420 — ^nondilceSvaropurane tu — daksa.yajSa-vinolinjrBi mahSghorayai 
yoginl.koti.parivrtayai bhadra-kalyai hrbn durgayai nama^/iti mantra^/’ 

27 



418 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


We liave shown elsewhere that the Ncmdikedvara-p. was a work quite 
different from the Nandi-pA It must not also he taken to he the same as the 
^ivadharma and the ^ivadharmottara,^ with which we shall deal later on. 

As to the contents of the Nandikeivara-p., our Imowledge is very meagre. 
Of the 41 lines quoted from this Upapurana in the Samvatsarapradipa^ ^ 
and in the works of Kamalakarahhatta Mitra Mifra.e Govindananda.o 
Baghimandana and ^ulapani,® two are concerned with Dovi-worship in 
the spring,® and twenty -four deal with the proper time and method of Devi- 
worship in autumn. The method of worship, as given in these 24 metrical 
lines, consists mainly of the following operations: Devi’s ‘hodhana’ and her 
‘adhivasa’ on a Bilva tree on the Suklasastlii Tithi; Patrika-prave^a on the 
following day; Devi-worship with animal-sacrifice, etc. on the Astami and the 
Navanu Tithi; immersion of the image of Devi in a current of water after 
causing it to be carried there on boats or by men, and the subsequent merry- 
makings by using abusive words against one another on the DaSami Tithi.^® 
The Mantras to be used in this worship had often. Tantric s 3 nnbolism .11 The 
remaining 16 lines (which are contained in the Satnvatsara-pradipa and in 
Mitra IVIifra’s Vira-mitrodaya and Raghunandana’s Tithi-tattva and Ahnika- 


1 This point has bean dealt with in our article on the 'Nandi-p.' which we hove contributed 
to the Journal of the Oanganath Jha Research Institute, Allahabad. 

2 R. L. Mitra, in his Notices of Sanskrit MSS., VI, pp. 272-4 (No. 220S), describes a MS. 
of a work which he styles os 'Nandikeivara-satphita alias NandikeSvarapurapa alios Sivadhar- 
mottara'. But actually this is a MS. of the Sivadharma and SivadharmoUara combined. It is 
for this reason that the final colophon of this MS. runs as follows: iti nandike&vBra>saipi)itn.yain 
Sivadharmottare ekaviinSatitamo ’ dhyayalji/ This MS. is the same os Horaprasad Shastri’s MSS. 
of the S'ivadharma and Sivadharmotlara described in his Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS., 
ASB, V, pp. 718 and 723-733, Nos. 4084 (I and H) and 4086 (I and H); and it has nothing to 

. do with the Nandikeivara~p. 

In Viivakosa (a Bengali encyclopaedia edited by Nagendra Nath Basu), IX, pp. 646-7 and 
649 also, tlie NandikeSvara~p. has been wrongly identified with the Sivadharma and the 
Nandipurapa. 

® Saipvatsara-pradipa, fol. 476 (naifiSvara-purSne — krtva lingaip tnaheSasya sarva-papai^ 
pramucyate/ sapta-janmarjitair dehl mano-vakkaya-kannabhib//). 

* Nirpaya-sindhu, p. 128 (bhagavotyab praveiadi-visargantaS ca yah kriyab/ 

....II iti tithi-tattve nandikeSvarapuranac oa/). 

* Vira-mitrodaya, Paribhfisa-prakata, p. 219. 

® Varsor-kautnudi, pp. 367, 375, 420. 

’ Smrti-tattm 1, pp. 69, 76, 86-87, 91, 131-2, 467, 612; H, p. 86. DurgSpuiS-tattva, pp. 2-3, 
7 and 38. 

® Durgotsava-viveka, pp. 7, 8, 9. Voaonti-vivefea, pp. 28, 29. 

® Vdsanfi-viveka, p. 29. 

1 ® Durgapuja-tattva, pp. 2-3 — 


4ravanena daSamyaip tu pranipatya visarjayet // 
nau-yanair nara-ySnair va tdtva bbagavatlip Sivfim / 
sroto-jale praksipeyub krid5*li8utuka-mangalaih // 
parair nSksipyate yaa tu parom nalcppate tu yab / 
tasya ru^ bhagavatl 4apatp dadyat sudanmam // 
**** •••• •••• •••• •••• 
11 See footnote 6 above, 
ays 


THE BRHANNANDIKE^VAEA AHD THE NAHDIKE^VABA PHKSTjTA 


419 


tattva^) deal with the following topics: benefits of worshipping a 6iva-lifiga; 
6iva-worship with the offer of food materials especially on the Ei^a-caturdara 
Tithi; benefit of repeating hundred times a hynm called Indrakm-stava, which 
was given in the Nandikeivara-p.', benefit of even telling others about the 
results of avoidmg meat; and the characteristics of marriageable and non- 
marriageablo girls.^ It is to bo noted that in none of these verses Devi 
appears as the speaker. The title of this Upapurana, however, shows that it 
was most probably NandikoSvara who narrated the contents of tliis work. 

MSS. are found of a work called ' KSldgnirudropani§ad' which claims to be 
a part of tho Nandikedmra-p.^ This work, which is practically a Tantric 
text, deals with the womhip of Kalagnirudra and ‘the propriety of putting 
across tho forehead three carved horizontal marks called Tripu^i^a in Sanskrit, 
this being indisj)ensablo to tho worship of Kalagnirudra’. In liis Jammu 
Catalogue, jJ. 201, Stein notes an early MS. of the ‘&iva~8totm' belonging to the 
Nandikeivara-p. 

The Nandikeivara-p. seems to have derived a large number of verses from 
other earlier works. For instance, the verse ‘ardrayain bodhayed devim’, 
which is quoted as from ‘ Nandikeivara-p.' in Varsa-kaumudl, pp. 367 and 375, 
is ascribed to the Devi-p. in Durgoteava-viveka, p. 4 and to Vyfisa and Satya in 
Kalaviveka, ijp.Sll and 614 respectively; the line ‘saptamyam mula-yuktayam’, 
of which the source is mentioned as * Nandikeivara-p.’ in Durgdpujd-tattva, 
p. 2, is ascribed to tho Devl-p. in Durgotmva-viveka, p. 8; the line ‘mulabhave 
pi saptamyam’, which is ascribed to the Nandikeivara-p. in Varsa-kaumudi, 
p. 367, is quoted as from ’Laifiga’ in Durgotsava-viveka, p. 8, and so on. It 
should bo mentioned hero that the sections on Durga-puja in the Devi-p., 
lAiiga-p., etc. were written much earlier than 1000 A.D. 

For further information about tho Nandiheivara-p. see above (Section I). 


1 Sco Smrti-tatlva I, pp. CO, 01, 131*2, 467 and 612. 

- Stnrti-taitva I, p. 012 — 

nandikoSvarn-pura^o — 

fiyomu sukoSI tanu-lomaraji 

subhrul> 8u£Iln Bugntili sudantil / 
vodlvimadliyn yadi pndkajok^I 
kulonn lilnapi vivahnniyn // 
dhr^tn kudnnta yadi pingn^ak^I 

lomna samaklrpa-samangn-ya^ih / 
madbyo ca pu«ta Todi raja*kanya 
knlo’pi yogya na vivahnniya // 

s Harapntssid Shnstri, Descriptive Catalogue of Sanskrit MSS., ASB, V, p. 800, No. 4146; 

Koith, Cat. of Sans, and Pkt. MSS. in the Library of the Iruiia Office, 11, i, pp. 013-4; P. P. S. 

Shostri, Tanjore Cat., XV, pp. 7176-76, Nob. 10582-83; and so on. 



furttob light on cola-sailendra relations from 

TAMIL INSCRIPTIONS 
(11th-13th oenttjribs) 

By 

Me. K. R. Venkata Rama Ayyab, Historical Records Officer, Puduklcottai 

The impulse that actuated Balaputra, a long of 6ri Vijaya, to build a 
Buddliist viMra at Nalanda was responsible for a later lung of 6ri Vijaya, 
6ri Culamanivarmadeva of the ^ailendra djmasty starting the construction of a 
vihara at Negapatam in the 21st year (1006 A.D.) of the reign of Raja Raja 
Cola I. This vihara, named Culdrmni-varina-vihara, was completed by his son 
Maravijayottufigavarman. Raja Raja granted the village of Anaimahgalam 
for the maintenance of the monastery and the palli or temple attached to it, 
which was named Bajarajapperumbajli after him. His successor Rajendra I 
confirmed liis father’s grant in an edict i that he issued shortly after his 
accession. 

The friendly relation that subsisted between the Colas and the ^ailendras 
did not continue for long, and about the year 1026 A.D., Rajendra carried out 
a naval expeditiorf against the kingdom of 6ri Vijaya. In the words of 
Krom,2 the campaign began with an attack on the capital 6ri Vijaya 
(Palembong) in which the king was taken prisoner, and was followed by the 
occupation of two important points on the east coast of Sumatra, the conquest 
of Malay Peninsula, and finally Atjeh (Lamri) and the Nicobars on the way 
back home; and all this was summed in the fall of Kat»ha (Tamil — Ka^dram 
or Ki^dram). Katoam, being the fiirst port of call for ships from India to 
Farther India and China, was the place best known to the people of the Tamil 
country, and hence Tamil inscriptions refer to the campaign as the conquest 
of Kadaram, and the king of 6ii Vijaya as KiddraUaraiyan. Ring Sahgrama 
Vijayottunga Varman, who was taken prisoner, aclmowledged C6la suzerainty. 

About 1068 A.D. Virarajendra^ again conquered Kadaram and settled 
the succession to the throne which was in dispute. The smaller Leyden copper 
plates,^ dated 1090 A.D., record an embassy from Kadaram to the Cola court 
at Ayirattali. Raja Vidyadhara and AbhimanOttuhga, the ambassadors from 
the KidSrattaraiyan, solLoited Kulottuhga Cola I to issue an edict confirming 
all the previous grants and specifying the privileges conceded to the Gdldmani- 
varmavihara and Bdjdr&japperumballi at Negapatam and to the newly built 
JRdjendra^olappurambalU, which was named after Kul5ttuhga, who bore the 
name Rajendra before his accession. 

The names that the Colas gave to towns and villages often proclaimed their 
conquests. After the conquest of Kadaram, Punjai (Tanjore district) came 

^ The larger Leyden grant. 

a “ R- A. N. Sastri’s SK Vijaya (B.E.E.E.O.). 

S.U., m, No. 84; M.B.B. 176 of 1894 {SJJ.. V, No. 468); Saatri, Colas, I, p. 332. 

* XXII, pp. 267-71. > . > 



rXTBTHEB LIGHT ON OOLA-SAILBNDBA BBLATIONS BBOM TAHTTT. INSOBIPnONS 421 

to be known in the inscriptions as Kiddramgon^dn,^ and ITarasingapuram 
(Chingleput) as Ki4dramgon4a^olapuram.^ An inscription at Tondamanad, 
near l^alahasti (Chittoor), mentions a grant of the village of Kiddraiigcyndaiola- 
puratn,^ obviously in the neighbourhood of ICalahasti. A village on the gulf 
of Mannar coast in the Kamnad district is stiU called Kidaram.^ 

One of the sons of Rajendra Cola II was called KA da,raTTignTidn.-Cn 1 n ..6 
The god in the temple of Karaivajivalliyur in Kalavaippajru, an old Cola 
territorial division of which Kalavai (North Arcot) was the headquarters, 
bore the name of KiddraAgonda ^dUharanvudaiyar^ (the Lord of Eidaxah- 
gopda-Coli^varam). 

Inscriptions of the reign of Baja Raja I up to his 16th year refer to 
Mapimahgalam (Chingleput) as Lokamahddevl Caturoedimangalam,^ called 
after his queen LSkamahadevT, but inscriptions 9 recorded after his 16th 
year, and in the reigns of his successors down to the reign of Kidottuhga I, 
call the village Bdjaculdmani GaturvedimaAgalam. One will not fail to be 
struck by the fact that the change in the name of the village was made about 
the time when Culamapivarman, Idng of ^ri Vijaya-Radaram, built the 
viJidra at Nogapatam. Four inscriptions at KuUapuram^o (Madura) register 
grants to the temple of Raja Raja-T^varamu^iyar at Kudalur, which was 
then Imown as Bdja-CiiddmanicaturvedimaAgalam.^^ Here the mangalam was 
called after Culamanivarman, while the god in the temple after his ally Raja 
Raja. 

These are instances of place-names and names of temples commemorating 
the triumph of the Colas in their wars with Kadaram, and the earlier alliance 
that subsisted between the two powers in the reign of Raja Raja I. 

It is generally accepted that the construction of vihdra^ m India by 
Sailendra longs is a clear proof of the presence in this country of people from 
6ri-Vijaya either as itinerant pilgrims or as permanent settlers.^^ Likewise 
there were South Indian colonists is in, Vijaya as the presence of inscriptions 
in South Indian characters in different parts of the kingdom testifies. One 
such inscription in Sumatra refers to the activities of the famous guild of 
South Indian merchants, the Ainnfirruvar or the ‘Five Hundred*. There are 
hn-lf a dozen iuscriptions in the Pudukkottai State which relate to a family of 
chiefs, whose tradition was bound up with Kadaram. 

In an inscription!* dated (1010 A.D.) in the reign of Raja Raja I, the 
god of the 6iva temple in Tiruvengaiva^al is called Tirumerrali Mahadeva or 


I 188, 191 nnd 196 of 1926. 2 244 and 246 of 1910. 

3 M.E.B., 232 of 1903. * M.E.B., 91-96 of 1906. 

3 S.IJ., m, p. 62. ® GudimaUur — MJJ.B., 416, 418 and 419 of 1906. 

7 Cf. M.E.B., 289 and 292 of 1897 and 7 of 1892. 

8 Catnrvodimangalam is a village granted to Brabmins -well-versed in the four Vedas. 

0 Cf. S.IJ., m. Nos. 28-30. 1 ° M.E.B., 146-149 of 1908. 

II Cftdamat^i is another form of OulSmatjLi. Sastri — SH Vijaya, pp. 277 and 284. 

13 Ibid., pp. 289 and 306-10; Sastri, Oolaa I, p. 208; IE, pp. 29-30; B. 0. Majumdar, 

Sumroodvlpa, I, pp. 188-90, 
w P.S.I., 88, 



422 


B. C. LAW VOLtJME 


the ‘Mahadeva of the Western shrine’, while in another, dated in the reign of 
Rajendra,! Baja Raja’s successor, he is called Gularmnivida^an,^ which 
again suggests the close alliance between Raja Raja and Culama^varman. 
What is perhaps of greater interest is that a chief, who called himself a 
Kidarattaraiyan, installed another lingam in the temple in the time of] 
Bajadliiraja 11. This lingam was named ^adiravidangan^ after Sadiran 
Bajan (Ira^an) Kulottunga Cola Kidarattaraiyan, who is referred to as an 
araiyaT of Peruvayil and Kunriyur nadns, two old territorial divisions, now 
included within the Puduldsottai State. Two of his descendants, Udaiyan 
Udaiya Perumal Kidarattaraiyan and Udaiyan Wramajagiya Tribhuvana 
Elidarattaraiyan, made endowments for the worship of the Ivhgam and for 
festivals.^ 

The titles Eajan and Udaiydr, home by these chiefs, indicate their high 
rank. They were in charge of the administration of two strategically important 
districts of the Cola empire. Two inscriptions at Pinnangu^ ® record grants 
by Sadiran Rajan to the 6iva temple in the village ; and one of them records 
that during one of his official visits to the village 6adiran Rajan inquired into 
the affairs of the temple, and on the unanimous representation of the residents, 
ordered additional grants to be made to meet the growing expenses of the 
temple. 

Copper-plate inscriptions refer to the ruler of 6ri Vijaya-Kadaram as 
i^n VisayadhipaU and KataMdhipati in Sansltrit and as Kidarattaraiyan ® in 
Tamil. The Kidarattaraiyans of the PudukkSttai inscriptions, however, were 
only C5la vassals administering districts in the Cola coimtry; and the question 
naturally arises how they came by this title. 

The Kallars emigrated from Tondaimandalam to the Cola and Pandya 
countries; and their migration, which started in the early centuries of the 
Christian era, received greater momentum under Pallava rule. They came 
south in the wake of the conquering Pallava armies, and those who settled 
in the south became military commanders or administrators of nddva or 
hUrrams. They later served the C5las and Pandyas, and distinguished them- 
selves in their campaigns. The principal Kallar settlements are now dis- 
tributed in the districts of Tanjore, Trichinopoly and Madura and in the 
Pudukkottai State, where they now form about fifty endogamous sections called 
nodus, and each ndd/u is subdivided into exogamous clans or septs. Among 
them there is a elan called Kiddttiriyan — ^now belonging to the Varappur 
nadu. Kidattiriyan is obviously a corruption of Kidarattaraiyan. The 
names of some of these clans bear testimony to the offices that their ancestors 
held. Mcdfiva-araiyan (now corrupted into Malavardn) Tyifla.Tis a chief of the 


1 P.S.I., 100. 

a Vidangan is a natural lingam not heism by a sculptor. 

3 P.S.I., 139; M.E.R., 246 of 1914; 195, 

* P.S.I., 196. 

6 Araiyan or Ara£an is the Tamil form of Rajan. 
r Nadu here means a tribal division and not a territorial division. 


P.S.I., 141 and 169. 



rtniTHER LIGHT OH OOLA-SAILENDRA RELATIONS EBOM TAMIL IHSOBEPTIONS 423 

Ma][ava country in South India; PaiidiycMTaiyan (corrupted into Pdy^ayan, 
or Pan^urdn) and Pancava-araiyan^ (Pancavaran), chiefs of districts in the 
Papdya country; and ^oytiiaraiyan (^ojattirayan), a chief in the Cola country. 
Chiefe, who participated in foregin campaigns and were in administrative 
charge of military camps or foreign territories under military occupation, 
were designated araiyans of those territories; and such designations include 
Ilattaraiyan or ‘araiyan of IJam or Ceylon’, Kali^attaraiyan or Kalingarayan^ 
or ‘araiyan of Kalihga’ and Kiddrattaraiyan or ‘araiyan of Kidaram’. 

Vlrarajendra, as we have seen, conquered Kadaram and placed a protege 
of his on the tlirone. There must have been at that time an army of occupation 
operating in some parts of the empire of l§ri Vijaya. We have the testimony 
of the smaller Leyden grant that ambassadors from Kadaram visited the 
court of Kulottuhga I, and his longer praiasti mentions that ‘at his palace- 
gate stood rows of elephants showering jewels sent as tribute from the island 
kingdoms of the mde ocean’. There is a reference in the Kalingattupparani 
to Kulottuhga’s destruction of Kadaram, and there is also the fr.scinatiag 
suggestion^ that Kulottuhga spent some years between 1063 and 1070 in 
6ri Vijaya restoring order there. Whether there were any further Cola 
campaigns subsequent to these reigns we have at present no data to decide; 
nor are we in a position to decide whether Sadfran RSjan participated in 
any foreign campaign. We hear of him only in inscriptions of the reigns of 
Rajadhiraja II and Kulottuhga HI. He bore the surname KuldUunga and a 
descendant of his, probably a son, took the surname Tribhuvanavira, one of 
the titles of Kulottuhga HI; and the family perpetuated the title Ki^dratta- 
raiyan. Sadfran Rajan must have therefore been a descendant of a chief, 
who participated in the Kadaram campaigns, and was honoured with the 
title Kiddrattaraiyan. 

An inscription at Tfruvorriyur * (Chingleput), dated in the 3rd year of 
Vijayagan^gopala, a contemporary of Raja Raja HI, records a gift of land 
to a Saiva monastery by a certain Ki^rattaraiyan (Kli^ratturaraiyan). It 
is not clear whether this Kidarattaraiyan of the Tfruvoryiyiir inscription was 
identical with either of the two chiefs mentioned in the Pinnahgu^ inscription® 
of the reign of Raja Raja HI. 

Pafieavan Ta6sm& Paixdiya. 

2 It mny be mentioned that not only generals ■were honoured with this title, but a throne 
was given this name. 

3 Journal of the Greater India Society, Vol. I, pp. 87-8. See Sostri, Oolas, H, pp. 26-9 
and Majumdar, Suvartfadvlpa, I, pp. 186-88. 

* 239 of 1912. ® P.SJ., 195. (See above.) 

Abbreviations. 

B.E.F.E.O. = Bulletin do L’Ecdle Eranoaise D’Extreme-Orient. 

E.I. , = Epigraphia Indica. 

E.J.G. = Krom ; BBndoe-Javaansohe Qeschiedenis. 

M.E.R. = Madras Epigraphical Reports. 

P.S.I. = Pudukkottai State Losoriptions. 

S.I.I. — South Inthau Ihscxiptions. 


BUDDHA 

By 

Madame A. C. Albers 
Kapilavasxu 

A sylvan summer night, the pine trees swayed 
Their emerald arms gently in sighing cadence 
Mellow, diaphanous, the moonlit air 
Now waved its element in gentle breezes. 

Laden with mingled perfumes, wafted sweet 
By jasmin, lilac, rose and violet. 

And on the garden and the palace walls 
A silver moonlit peace guarded the slumber 
And rested the fair queen in royal hall 
On sillcen cushions, white, lavender scented 
(White silver moonlight played upon her bed) 
Virgin and holy, and into her dreaming 
A mystic ray of rosy vision stole: 

A starlit elephant, shining in glory 
Thrice trumpeted and vanished in her heart. 

Then came an untold peace upon her being 
And an all hallowed bliss filled all the air. 

Sweetly soft, whispering voices holy anthems 
Foretold the coming of a great event. 

And knew the Queen she was a chosen mother 
A glorious being would descend to earth. 

Ldmbini 

A garden, where in silver melody 

Soft spirit voices whispered amid branches. 

Laden with bloom of lavender and pearl, 

Where lithe gazelles brouzed upon emerald grasses 
And violet bordered brooklets joined their lay 
With carols of soft-throated plumed musicians/ 
While humming birds with topaz wing outspread 
Whirled love-charmed round a honey laden lotus. 
All, all was peace and spirit harmony. 

Here neath a tree, which bore a lightsome burden 
Of chiysophrase and lilac-rose-hued love./ 

There stood a lady, graceful, taB and slender. 

The lovelight of her soulful midnight eyes 
Outshone in splendour all that garden-beauty. 
Held all the mystery of suns and stars. 

And the fond branches, deep in worship bending 



3BTTDDHA 


425 


Formed over her a shading canopy. 

And on her form, in mellifluous showers 
Earned fragrant bloom of lilac and of rose, 

While neath her feet gold waves of flowers burgeoned. 

And stood the Queen erect in majesty; 

Nor felt a pang or pain that holy moment. 

Thus came He forth, Buddha, the' holy child. 

But could the world not hold her; her life’s mission./ 

Being fulflUed, upon the seventh day// 

That marked the advent of the Heaven hero/ 

Queen Maya closed her eyes to earthly scenes. 

The infant Prince received the name, Rid ij liar f.lm., 

His mother’s sister took Him in her care. 

Upon the child’s form were the signs of Lordship 
Which marked Him Master over men and gods. 

And wondrous things foretold divining sages: 

He would leave home and wander lonely forth 
To find the path that leads unto salvation 
For men and gods and for all living kind. 

Which hearing. King 6uddhodana, the father 
Felt sore at heart, sought to outgo stem fate. 

Gave orders that before the Prince be uttered. 

As he grew up, no single word of woe. 

He should not know that in the world is sorrow. 

For liim was but the happiness of life, 

Built gorgeous palaces and pleasure gardens 

Where the young Prince shordd spend His childhood’s days. 

Childhood 

Then grew the child from babe to sunny boyhood, 

Full ripe in mind, and mastered He the lore 
Of books and scroll, and all that wise instmotors 
Could place before Him, and it soon was found 
The teachers were the pupfls of their pupil. 

Yet was He ever meek and courteous 
But was it seen that with advancing years 
He courted loneliness and silent places 
And once while sitting thus in fond dream stale 
Tn stiU repose in sylvan garden bower, 

He did behold on high a fleecy cloud 
Swift moving and of scintillating whiteness: 

A flock of noble swans on northward flight 
Steered towards Himalayan height; their snowy plumage 
The lovenotes that they sent through the stifl air 
The slender grace of their soft swaying movement, — 



B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


All these touched deeply the young boy’s full soul 
And looked he long upon that scene of beauty. 

Wlien lo,- from that white cloud of winged love 
A still form dropped, its pure snow stained with crimson. 
Then stirred deep anguish young Siddhartha’s heart. 

He took the bird, loosened the deadly arrow 
And stemmed the crimson flood with sldlfiil hand. 

But now appeared his kmsman, Devadatta, 

With haughty mien and speaking angry words, 

‘Give me the bird: the prey goes to the hunter, 

My arrow brought the swan unto the ground.’ 

But spake Siddhartha gently, ‘Nay, my cousin. 

You killed, but I restored his gasping breath. 

Greater than death is life, and he who giveth 

Life to a dying form does better deed 

Than does the black hand of the wanton slayer.’ 

Then nursed the bird back unto health and strength/ 

Till it could join its tribe in the free ether. 

The Bride 

^uddhodana, remembering prophecies 

Liked not the brooding mind of young Siddhartha, 

And on advice of the State Ministers 
Arranged for the young Prince His early nuptials. 

Then went the royal mandate through the land; 

The youthful maidens of the Princely houses 
Were told to come to ^uddhodana’s Court 
And they appeared, a glorious procession: . 

The golden dew of budding maidenhood 

The rosy buds of young life’s glowing spring time. 

Each was to get a present from the Prince. 

And robed in garments bright and iridescent, 

That vied with rose beauty of each face 
They passed the Throne shyly their lashes lifting 
And then moved on, blushing with timid amilfl 
Till came the last flower of that golden garland, 

The friirest of the Princely maidens all, 

Ya^odhara, a spring of laughing water 
Not timid she, but frankly stepped she forth. 

The deep look of her eye, her very presence 
Awakened memories in Siddhartha’s mind 
Of a great love in long forgotten ages, 

And each saw in the other’s soul revealed 
Its own pure higher self, its greater being. 

And was YaSodhara the chosen bride. 



BtJDDHA 


427 


But in those days, when princes wooed a ma id e n 
They had to win the prize by feat of arms. 

Then were the heralds sent through aU the kingdom 
And came the young Knights for the tournament. 
But none surpassed the Prince in manly vigour, 

In courage and in military skm 

And now the bridal of unequalled splendour, ' 

And then fond home days in the palace walls 
Li time a child was bom, a son, Rahula. 

The good king’s father-heart at last felt peace. 

‘My son has found Bis own, His heart is happy.’ 

He knew not the great soul of his own son. 


The Foub Signs 

Siddliartha felt anew His life’s great mission. 
Expressed a wish to see the world outside 
Then were the roads made bright by royal mandate 
Garlands and waving flags welcomed the Prince. 

But in celestial hall the gods held counsel. 

And well disguised appeared upon the road 
An aged man feeble and palsy stricken 
He cried in agony, held trembling hand 
Pleading for alms to still his gnawing himger 
Scarce could he speak, his voice was choked by cough 
Then driving on beneath the swaying garlands. 

They saw beside the road a writhing form 
In pain and agony weeping and groaning. 

‘Help’, cried he feebly, ‘help me. Oh good Prince, 

Or I shall die ere dawns another morning.’ 

Shuddered the Prince at the woe-stricken sights, 

And ever more felt all the world’s deep sorrow 
And asked He sadly of His charioteer, 

‘When ills and weakness can hold out no longer. 

What follows then ? ’ ‘Then follows death, my Lord. 
The final which awaits all living beings.’ 

‘And what is death 1 I never heard that word’ 

But soon He saw, a group of weeping mourners. 
Lamenting and bemoaning bitter fate. 

Came down the coimtry road in slow procession. 

Anf^ at their head walked foiu:, with solemn step. 
Bearing a cot decked with a snow-white cover. 

‘And who lies there so still that sheet beneath ? ’ 

‘That is a corpse; my Lord, stiff, cold and lifeless 
An empty shdl from which the soul has fled.’ 



B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


A ghastly flamo, that gloamcd by tho near rivor 
Soon told tho tnlo: tho end,— tho end of all. 

Tho liord looked at tho gruosomo scono and quostionod 
‘Is thoro no way then out of nil this woo ? ’ 

‘Ah, no ray Lord, from this thoro is no rosouo.’ 

Then driving homo, thoy mot upon tho road, 

Ono, calm and stately, jicaco upon his features. 

‘And Channa, who is this’ thus nskod tho Prince 
‘Upon whoso face rests such a deep contontmont ? ’ 
‘That is a monk, who did forsake tho world, 

And found his peace within tho realm of silonco.’ 

Then Imow tho Princo of mon His time was ripo. 

Tho great world called Him and Ho could not linger. 


The Fabewell 

And ns Ho wont to leave parental halls. 

His strong heart felt its manly pulses throbbing. 
Then hushed and solcranty with noiseless step 
Ho walltcd tho long porphyry pillnrd passage 
That led into a hallowed sanctuary, 

WoU EontinoUod by gold-edged snmito curtains. 

And pushing with light hand tho folds aside 
He gazed upon that star-blossod scono boforo Him. 
Here lay tho Pearl, that His heart’s inmost coro 
Had ehorished through unnumbored passing ages, 

A lovo that boro tho tost of centuries. 

And Ho beheld again, with inward vision 
Fond golden days of long forgotten lives. 

So calm she lay, .her waving hair half hiding 
The mystic, occult beauty of hor face. 

And resting on her heaving, ivoiy bosom, 

Clasped in the lily softness of her arms. 

His only child, eye-lids in slumber drooping. 

And heaved tho pulses of His manly heart. 

But heard His soul beneath this fond love-vision 
A low voiced whining, weeping, burning sobs, 

Saw wringing hands and ghastly, gore-stained faces 
Curses and tears upon the soughing wind: 

The bleeding soulory of all vast creation. 

Then burned His heart in anguish and Ho wont. 
Kingdom and power and wealth and love forsaking. 
And tarried He no more, but with firm step 
Took the bleak roadway of the homeless wanderer. 



BUDDHA 


429 


Buddha Gaya 

Now onward wandering from place to place 
Met many sadhus, each holding a doctrine. 

Among these were five pious mendicants. 

In a sequestered grove near Uruvela. 

Their lives were pure, but their austerities 
Extreme and stringent beyond human reason. 

Hero stayed the Lord sometime, but soon He found 
Not hero could Ho accomplish His life’s mission, 

And grow His frame so weak that in the end 
He fainted, lay exhausted by tho wayside. 

A hordsman came that way, driving his fiock. 

Ho saw that noblo form all prostrate lying. 

Then from tho teeming uddor of a ewe, 

Ho pressed into His mouth its millcy substance. 

And lo, tho Lord revived and opened His eyes. 

Still felt Ho weak and neath the sylvan verdure 
Tho cooling foliage of a shading tree 
Ho found a seat. Here deep in meditation 
Sujata saw Him, pious herdsman’s wife. 

Unto whoso mother-heart tho gods had granted 
Tho longed for precious gift of a sonchild. 

Sho sought a holy man, to whom to offer 
A gift prepared by her own pious hand: 

A bowl of milk-rice, served in golden basin. 

She saw tho Lord in glory neath that tree. 

Thought Him a god and prostrating in worship, 

Sho placed tho bowl of milk-rice at His feet. 

Tho Lord portook and felt His body stronger. 

And now comes tho groat moment of Hjs life 1 
Behold ye suns and moons the Sakyamuni : 

Tho time has como. He sits beneath the tree. 

Behold tho tree, laden with glowing clusters 
Of vivid bloom, brilhant in soft-tinged rose 
Veiled in a lustrous ohiysophrase, and blending 
Its hue and fragrance with young spring’s full life. 

Bend the green branches down in fond obeisance. 

A hallowed murmur runs from star to star. 

And stand the gods hushed in mute expectation. 

While through the land of downfall and black sin 
Strange whispers pass of hope and coming freedom. 

And undxdating waves of occult force 

Flow through all throbbing hearts from brute to human. 

Now Mara, seeing, comes with his mad hosts 



30 


B. C. LAW VOIiTJME 


On the winged wind of an unbridled’ fiiry, 

And opens nil the flood-gates of liis hate. 

But fire and curses, all hell’s gruesome torrents 
Cannot subdue the Prince of gods and men. 

The ■victory shines on His imperious features 
And from the wellspring His valiant heart 
An unquenchod Are 6f love and peace is flaming. 

All Mara’s hosts of lurid screaming ghouls 
Cannot do harm e’en ’to his spotless garment. 

Now turns in tenfold ^ath the evil one 

‘You have not made the five groat gifts Siddhartha. 

My teeming hosts bear witness xmto mo. 

Speak now you, 6akya-prineo, who is your witness.’ 
Then rose ten million voices from the soil. 

And spake the mightj' earth in roaring thunder, 
‘We boar Thee witness, dauntless 6ukya-princo.’ 
Now fled all heU’s wild hosts in dread confusion. 
Tilt morning daions, the victory is won. 

And oh, the glory of that love-charmed morning 
O’er all creation hung the silver veil 
Of a great dream, whore rosy beacons glimmered 
Inviting to a world of mellow rest. 

Whore pain is put to sleep ]}carl oases, 

The wind filled sails of all unquenchod desire 
Axe furled. The craft playing on wavcless ocean 
Will find its harbour on a starlit shore. 

That tranquil laud of dew-kissed lustrous silence. 
The morning isle of a perennial dawn. 

The Debb Paek 

Now in the fulness of His Buddhahood 
He walked the road that led unto Benares 
Where the five comrades of H!is former days 
Were keeping rest. Seeing His form approaching. 
They whispering spake, ‘Behold He has come back 1 
But we will not now greet Him as Preceptor.’ 

But when they saw His soul’s full majesty. 

Upon His noble brow wisdom’s bright splendour. 
Those deep eyes with unfathomed glory filled. 

They bowed their heads in revexent obeisance. 

And fell in adoration at Hia feet. 

And here, near Kashi, in the sylvan deer park 
He set in motion the great ‘Wheel of Law ’ 

That Wheel that sent its beacon through the ages 
And left its golden stamp on many lands. 



BtIDDHA 


431 


The pebbly desert bears eternal witness, 

The sages of the South and northern Lakes, 

Live by the Law, tell morbid world-tired seekers 
Of an effulgent Life that cannot die. 

Cahnly He sat. His hand elate in blessing. 

Drawn by the magic of those towering words. 

The flaming devas'from supernal regions. 

The groaning dwellers of the lampless pit. 

And all the speechless dwellers of the forest 
Assembled at that grove in harmony. 

Joining the flve, all listening in mute rapture 
The sylvan harpstring of this rhythmic speech 
The mellifluent notes of silver cadence 
That from the wellspring of His diamond soul 
Gave hope to man and beast and sobbing spirits 
And sent its echo over worlds in space. 

That was the night of a world stirring rapture. 

That fllled the heaving air with cosmic force, 

A spring from which flowed forth an eightfold river, 
Which waters stiU a thirsty world today. 

Ku^rNAJii 

Near Ku4inara in sequestered grove 

Four Sal trees stand, their crowns in rhythm swaying, 

A mystic murmur passes through the air. 

The young twigs weep and sigh their rosy blossoms 
The melancholy crowns wave doleful dirge 
hUngled with the soft sobbing of the leaves. 

The falling tears of foliage laden branches. 

The sighing lutestrings of the soughing wind 
Adding a sad refrain in soulful cadence. 

Nature is stirred unto its inmost core. 

The heaving earth, the waves of distant oceans 
Call forth mysterious voices from the deep. 

And unknown mysteries rise from dark caverns; 
Strange occult forces, unknown all to man. 

Join in one mighty world encircling anthem. 

And blend their voices in a requiem. 

While o’er the earth the pall of death is hanging. 

But is the ground a carpet of gold bloom 
That fall from vivid height in gorgeous showers. 
Laden with scent of lavender and myrrh; 

And fragrance wafted from celestial gardens 
Send waves of light in a transcendent stream. 

The air is kindled with love-blazing beauty. 



432 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


The gods are sending from their unseen realms 
A glorious welcome to a world-tired pilgrim, 

Who soon will travel tlirough their sunny land, 

Into Vastness of unconquered Silence. 

And under these four sal trees stands a couch. 

Around which stand in pale and stricken anguish 
A multitude, who turn their tear-stalhed eyes 
Upon that couch in poignant adoration. 

There in serene, unstricken majesty 
Solemn and calm the conqueror is resting. 

Halos of glory from Has body sbino. 

Still speaks His voice, the love-notes gently flowing 
In mellifluent cadence, golden stream. 

Bidding farewell in those fond, tender accents 
That, ah, so offc have made their hearts rejoice. 

But now, on every word hang silver teardrops. 

‘Weep not for me, my friends, the Law, the Doctrine 
That I have given you, shall bo your guide. 

Be steadfast on the path that I have shown you. 

And be ye each a lamp unto himself. 

I now go to my final home, Nirvaija 
The weary pathway in Samsara’s round, 

My searching aching feet no more shall wander. 

And you awaits the same great Destiny.’ 

Then came the moment of majestic stillness. 

Hushed was the hour, — ^His great heart beat no more. 
The conqueror had gone to Has Dominions, 

That land of bliss beyond all time and space. 

Where only love and unchecked thought can follow 
Where change and weeping sorrow are no more. 

Where in perennial cosmic silence shrouded 
Eternal life rests in transcendent bhss. 

Now quaked the earth, the rivers swelled in torrents 
And mystic forces filled the atmosphere. 

Down &om supernal heights reigned flaming garlands 
In golden showers on that holy bier. 

Now they who mourned turned to their last-love-duty 
With weeping hearts and bitter burning tears. 

But spake the voice within, that roused to action ! 
‘Forward, go carry on the flaming torch, 

O’er land and seas shall flow the fiery banner, 

The world shall know the Lovelight of the Law.’ 

And thus the Wheel of the great Law is rolling 
And will roll on as long as time does last. 



THE ART OF THE MARATHAS AND ITS PROBLEMS 


By 

Db. H. Goetz, Baroda 

The art of the Marathas is still a neglected field of Indian archaeology. 
As a result of certain traditional prejudices most scholars have dismissed, a 
priori, the idea that it might be worth investigation or appreciation. 

The first prejudice is that the lllaratha raiders had been too rude soldiers 
to be capable of bringing forth an art of their own. Yet the same argument 
might have been brought forward against Tamerlan, the Ghaznavids, Saljuqs, 
Ottoman Turks, many conqueror hordes of China, the early Mediaeval kingdoms 
of Europe, etc. The barbarism of conqueror hordes can go hand in hand 
with an appreciation of cultural values amongst their leaders, encouraging a 
distinct class of scholars, artisans, religious men. Such an appreciation, 
however, had existed amongst the klarathas from the very beginning. There 
was the religious renaissance of the Marathi saints, of a Tukaram, Ramdas, 
etc., there was a traditional cultivation of Sanskrit learning amongst the 
Deccani brahmins, there was a rural art going back to the Hemadpanthi style, 
and echoes from the court arts of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. There was, since 
the conquest of Hindostan, a desire to vie with the splendours of the Mughal 
and Rajput courts. 

The second prejudice consists in the idea that the Maratha hegemony 
represents the sunset of Indian greatness, the last flare-up within a general 
decadence. This is true iu a sense. But on the other hand it is likewise 
true that political decadence is not identical with cultural decadence, though 
it colours cultural life in a special manner. Impoverishment and disintegration 
of the open country can go parallel with the splendour of courts and aristo- 
cracies. Then art becomes an escapism, but this escapism can create wonderful 
dream worlds, sensuous as well as mystic-religious. The Italian and Spanish 
Baroque or the French Rococo were such like dream worlds, and Indian art 
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is another one. 

A third prejudice is directed against the aesthetic qualities of such like 
arts, and through the Victorian art critics it has up to the present day influenced 
the current judgments on late Indian art. But modem criticism has since 
long reversed that verdict, and it is high time to do so also in this country. 
Art criticism of the nineteenth century demanded solely simplicity, harmony 
and naturalness, the characteristics of young and hopeful times. But the 
m o . in of decadent periods is tom and emotional, liis art seeks the stronger 
contrasts of his own life, a rich symphonic orchestration of devalued traditional 
forms, the show of strength besides the masquerade of conventions, an extreme 
emotionalism at the side of a mathematical purity of forms, fervent mysticism 
besides gross sensualiiy, exuberant ornaments besides utter simplicity, brilliant 
lights contrasted with deep shadows, glamourous coloms and patterns, balanced 
28 


484 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


by a sense of unreality, of the illusory character of all those dearly loved earthly 
things. 

If these aesthetic problems Maratha art has in common vdth that of the 
later Mughals, Rajputs and Sildis, another criticism specially levelled against^ 
it is that of eclecticism. But tliis, too, is a prejudice. Art is not a flower which 
somewhere, sometime mysteriously springs from a mystic national soil as 
certain romantic art critics would liko to mako us believe. National arts are 
nowhere born as pure virgins, they are tho products of chaotic agglomerations 
of cultural elements, national as well as foreign, contemporary as well as 
old ones. Only with growing maturity they develop a personality of their 
own, become pure and apparently unstained by any foreign mfluences. The 
refined AfinnaTi civilization of ancient Crete and tho barbarian art of the 
Danube basin, imports of Assyro-Babylonian art by Phoenicians, Lydians and 
Cyprians, the late Egyptian art of Sais have all contributed to tho tradition 
leading to the masterpieces of tho Parthenon and of Porgamon. Siberian 
nomads and Iranian cavaliers, Indian Buddhists, Greeks and Thai barbarians 
have enriehed the stagnant Chinese civilization inherited jB.*om tho Chou, so 
that the grand classic art of China of the Teang and Sung emperors could 
be bom. At the roots of the pedigree of tho Taj ^lahal there stand Pathan 
traditions from Delhi, Malwa and Gujarat, influences from Bengal, Bajputana 
and the Deccan, and new imports from Persia and Turkistan. What has made 
all of them great, was not the virgin purity of their origin, but the strong 
national or social consciousness which could assimilate these many influences 
into one new, self-contamed style of outspoken personality. The ‘ eclecticism ’ of 
Maratha art is only that of all young arts, also of classic Gupta art during 
its formative stage in the Mathura of the late Indo-Soythians. Maratha art 
has in the course of time likewise evolved its own personality and charac- 
teristic style. But this is too often overlooked because the lifetime of its 
mature style had been brief, whereas the formative elements have been 
overemphasized, as they still are better known than the style ^aUy born 
from them. 

But just this makes Maratha art so interesting. For as it is near to us, 
we are in an exceptionally good position to study the mechanism of its growth 
and the forces behind the latter.. Let us, therefore, study the questions: 
Krst, which social forces have formed Maratha art ? Then, which elements 
have contributed to its formation? Thirdly, what has been the selective 
process and what the hierarchy of types in this agglomeration? Finally, 
what are the characteristics of the style into which they were fused ? 

As already observed there existed a certain cultural tradition in the ^ 
Maratha country already before ^ivaji raised the banner of rebellion against 
the Muslim rulers of Bijapur and Delhi. Nay, this local culture had been tho 
prerequisite condition to render his ambitious dreams practicable at aU. 
For no national consciousness and still less any national enthusiasm are 
possible without a distinct cultural tradition differentiating its carriers from 

the neighbourii^ nations and States. On the negative side, this distmotive 

28 b 



THE ABT OF THE MARATHAS AND ITS PROBLEMS 


436 


consciousness was created by the common protection offered by the foot- 
hills of the Western Ghats to the heirs of the Silaharas and Hoysalas, and the 
refugees from Deogiri and Vijayanagar against the slow, but persistent advance 
of the Islamic powers, Khil jis and Tughlaqs, Bahmaxds, ITizamshahis and 


•„dilshabis. On the positive side it was created by the Maratha saints, 
Tukaram, Bamdas, etc. 

This civilization was rural and simple, its architecture a faint echo of the 
Hemadpanthi temple style combined with the Western Beccani peasant house, 
its sculpture and painting of that very crude type which we can trace every- 
where as the oldest one after the crisis of the Muslim invasions. Then, with 
the rise of Mlaratha jagirdars in the service of Bijapur, Abmadna g ar and Delhi 
and finally with the kingdom of 6ivaji (1646-80) higher demands for luxury 
and pomp came up which, however, were still simple enough. It seems that 
they were satisfied by second-class artisans from the surroundiug Muslim 
centres. This attitude changed with the rise of the Peshwas. The great 
pillaging campaigns aU over India brought home many art treasures; king ^ahuji 
(-j-1749) had the leisure of a peaceful life which always encourages the protec- 
tion of the arts ; the Peshwas Bajirao I (1720-40) and Balaji Baji Bao (1740-61), 
proud and ambitious, had the desire to exhibit their growing power in buildings 
and pompous ceremonies; artisans and dancing girls were imported from the 
North, though there still prevailed a haughty disdain against the toy things of 
the weak and corrupt Hindusthanis, comparable to that of the Bomans against 
the ‘Graeculi’. 

But tmder Mfidhav Bao I (1761-78) and IT (1774-95) and the long regency 
of NSna Famavis (-f-1800) Maratha life had become refined. There still 
continued a certain immigration of artists from Bajputana and even from 
China, but on the whole Maratha art had already found its own style, with a 
certain variation in the North where the coimections of Mahadji Sindhia 
(1761-94) with the Mughal court and Jaipur had created a much stronger 
Mu ghal influence, and at Tanjore (since 1679) in the South where South Indian 
civilization predominated. Since the reign of Baji Bao II (1795-1818) the 
disintegration set in. With the break-up of the Maratha federation also its 
art was dispersed over many local centres which fell under the influence of 
their surroundings. And finally European influence became strong when 
British suzerainty had made Western art fashionable. But also the latter 
has undergone curious vicissitudes, penetrating in mixed and archaic forms 
before its genuine contemporary aspects could find acimowledgmeut. 

At the beginning of Maratha art there stands a style which may somehow 
have been derived from Hemadpanthi architectture. But the connection is 
not strict, for after the Muslim invasions it can be traced almost everywhere 
and may better be regarded as a primitive rural style which alone survived 
when the great temples had been overthrown and their beautifid sculptures 
mutilated. It is true that this richer temple architecture was revived in the 
fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, but as far as our evidence at present goes, 
this seems to have been the result of a conscious renaissance whereas the 


436 


B. O. LMV VOLUME 


development of the primitive typo finally led to Rajput nrclutoctufe and its 
Mughal offshoots tmdor Alibar and Jahangir. But in tho Maratha country 
f.liis primitive style survived so long that its fundamental characteristics wore 
preserved into a later and richer ago. Its characteristics aro cellas and close^^ 
mandapas of almost plain walls, and rather low stop roofs. These roofs may bo 
interpreted as a simplification of tho miniature storeys of tho classical Mediaeval 
mandapa roofs back to a clumsy corboUed dome of crude stone beams. Open 
mandapas or Nandi mandaj)as generally have simple quadrangular pillars, 
with hardly a suggestion of a capital. In more elegant examples the 
rectangular ground plan has received a certain onriclimont by receding corners, 
niches in the interior, a simple door moulding and pillars changing from a 
lower quadrangular to an upper octangular cross-section. In the first half of 
the eighteenth century (Satara, Piu'andhar, Panliala, etc.) the type has been 
farther refined under Mughal-Rajinit infiuence, tho roof assumes tho shape of 
a tent, early Muslim battlement ornaments decorate tho cornice, the door 
looks an archaic mihrab, tho ceilmg has assumed the sixteenth century Rajput 
type (Amber, Orchha, Datia) of superimposed rows of sloping slabs, with a 
lotus ornament in the centre, tho niches belong to the same style, and in the 
South (Kolhapur, Panhala) lathe-turned Deccani-Hindu columns are intro- 
duced.- Still later examples (e.g. temple of Sawai Madho Rao at Purandliar) 
show in the interior rich Mughal arches, niches and ceilings, and on tho exterior 
a lotus knob instead of the amalaka. But then the typo seems to have quickly 
degenerated. 

Parallel to this temple architecture goes a house style consisting of stone 
terraces surrounding one, two (ladies’) or more courts over which halls, gaUeries 
and rooms are constructed by heavy wooden columns and beams, with inter- 
stices filled in with brickwork and plaster. In the whole Deccan peasant 
houses of this type are to be found, and the later Maratha palaces are dis- 
tinguished from them only by a greater number of courts and storeys (generally 
two storeys with a third in front) up to six (Shanvarwada, Poona) and seven 
(Indore), and rich wood carvings, wall paintings and plaster ornaments in a 
style evolved from Mughal-Rajput art. 

The architecture of the Bahmanis, Adilshahis and Nizamshahis had been 
known to the Marathas from the many hill-forts erected since the reign of 
Mahmiid I Bahmani (1378-97) and further improved under the successive 
dynasties of the Bahmanis. Generally speaking, this Deccani-Muslim architec- 
ture of the hiH-forts is of a stem and rather plain type, though tho mosques, 
tombs and gates often have elegant arch and pilaster mouldings and some 
floral motifs and knobs on top of the arches. 6ivaji continued this tradition, 
but after his death it seems to have died out. The utter distress of Mughal 
pressure and of civil war had not been favourable to new building activities. 

Only when the victorious advance of the Maratha armies after the death 
of Aurungzeb (1707) gave peace to the MAratha country and pride to its 
leaders, the arts began to flourish again. It seems that the first impulse had 
been given by the Peshwa Baji Rao I (1720-40) when in 1730 he started to 


THE AB.T OE THE 3MARATHAS AND ITS PBOBLEMS 


437 


erect his own fortified Wada in Poona. But not before 1740 building activities 
seem to have assumed a greater extent, until the crisis of 1761 and the death of 
Balaji Baji Rao (1761) made a temporary end to this first heyday of hlaratha 
art. We may call it the Eclectic Period. Eor no genuine Maratha style had 
'V. jt developed. Artisans were summoned from all sides so that the art of this 
period is a real sample collection of Indian styles. In the South, at Kolhapur 
or Mahuli near Satara, the temple architecttne of Mediaeval Warangal or 
Kanara is taken up again, the royal samadhs at Mahuli reflect the styles of the 
Earuqi dynasty of Khandesh and of the Eizamshahis of Daulatabad, inter- 
mixed with ornament motifs from Gulbarga, Bidar and Vijayanagar. The 
fortifications of the Shanvarwada in Poona and of the old Bhonsle Wada in 
Nagpur, Baji Rao I’s Gate at Purandhar, or the Omkare^vara Temple in 
Poona, the galleries of the Bhavani Temple in Aundh, of the Vi^ve^var Mahadev 
and Krishnesvar Mahadev Temples in Mahuli, the Khandoba Temple at 
Jejuri, etc. follow a simple vault style of which it is difiicult to say whether 
it should be defined as early Rajput, degenerated Deccani or provincial Mughal. 
At the Samgame^var Temple at Sasvad Mughal ornaments again are intro- 
duced into an else pure Hindu renascence architecture. Balaji Baji Rao’s 
great temple at Trimbak finally resumes the Mediaeval Gujarati-North-westem 
Deccani tradition in aU its splendour, and also in the temples of Nasik, especially 
in the Sundar Narayan, Gujarati features are strongly in evidence, whereas the 
Mahakala Temple of Ujjain represents a rather clumsy renascence of the 
North Indian temple type. 

Of the secular architecture of this period we know so far only little; 
but the palace of Ranoji SindliiS. (1726-46) at Ujjain is a rather plain Maratha 
building, with a bangaldar roof over the closed pavilion on top of the fa 5 ade. 

It is stiU too early to define the sculpture of this time. It seems to be a 
more or less slavish imitation of classical Mediaeval models, careful in detail, 
but generally the figures are too short, especially the legs, and stiff and expres- 
sionless. More we know about pictorial art. The museum of Aundh has 
very old illustrated manuscripts of two style types. The first might be 
described as a very primitive variety of the Southern Rajput school of 
Jahangir’s time, the other as a degeneration of the seventeenth century Bijapur 
school. But imder the first Peshwas both types were superseded by the works 
of provincial Mughal artists of which especially the collection of the Bharat 
Itihas Samshodhak Mandal at Poona possesses a representative collection. 

The second half of the eighteenth century forms the zenith of 
Maratha art. The disaster of Panipat (1761) had chastened the minds. 
Though there remained sufficient egoism, c unnin g and imscrupulous brutality 
amongst many army leaders, a certain idealism had nevertheless caught the 
minds. The three Peshwas, Madhav Rao I (1761-72), Narayan Rao (1772-73) 
and Sawai Madhav Rao (1774r-96), tried their best to be exemplary rulers, 
Nana Pamavis, the crafty statesman behind the scenes, likewise realized the 
importance of Hindu dharma as authority of the regime, and Ahalya Bai of 
Indore (1704-95) a genuine saint'. An intellectual atmosphere had 



438 


B. O. liAW VOIiBMlS 


developed fostering a oharactoristic art in which all the elements still discernible 
in the preceding period were fused into one style. 

In the temples of this later period brick and plaster dominate as they 
are more adaptable to rich forms. The starting point of these late temples 
is the iJost-Mnghal architecture of Rajputana. Ah’oady the Rajputs had^ 
transformed the Mughal style into a Hindu art, i.e. they had dissolved the 
essentially functional-structural Muslim interpretation of forms into a symbolic- 
sculptmal one, reduced the subordinate parts to mere moulded ornaments, 
amalgamated them into now composite forms, and multiplied them into 
complicated symphonies of reduplications. 

This tendency was taken up and continued by the Marathas. The 
Mediaeval sikhara formed a composite of a plain central spire along which 
innumerable small ^ikliaras, slim and broad ones, rose upwards, mitil that 
vertical movement was finally capped by the heavy horizontal amalaka. 
The Maratha ^ildiara forms a similar system, not of spires but of miniature 
Deccani and Mughal bangaldar chhattris and minarets. But whereas in late 
Rajput temples these chhattris still are genuine pavilions, in the Maratha 
temples they are grouped together in row after row, in bundles and column 
bundles until the top is capped, not by an amalaka, but by a miniature fluted 
bulb dome rising from a lotus, like the cupolas of the later Bijapuri mausolea. 

In the Maratha temples of the Deccan this lotus-dome amalaka is on the four 
sides often supported by big Nagas, apparently a heritage from 6ilahara i 
architecture. Only very few of these miniature chhattris are genuine pavilions, 
most of them are massive structures whose niches are filled with the modelled 
or painted figures of gods, saints and angels. The niches of the ceUas are 
generally enclosed by the traditional Mediaeval Gujarati framework, but 
their columns not seldom are of a Muslim type, a cusped arch is set into the 
frame, and the jali filling is as often as not of Muslim origin. Smaller niches not 
seldom show a simple pendentif work evolved from a prototype common in the 
Tughlaq period. The border of the platform supporting the mandapa is often 
decorated with stone reliefs of those heavy rings, at which the Mughals used 
to fasten the ropes of their shamiyanas. For the mapdapa and ardhamandapa 
proper the Gujarati cupola has become the rule, often supported by late 
Mughal arches, and with a low or lotus-bud exterior dome. Along the cornice 
a mimature Mughal pent roof is added, often crowned by a Muslim battlement 
frieze. Another very characteristic type of mandapa simply is the hall of the 
Maratha palace erected in front of the cella, as on the other hand many real 
durbar halls end in the shrine of the Ishta Devata of the Sardar or royal family. 
Thus Maratha temples in most cases also are enclosed in a court of the usual 
Maratha type, the halls of which serve as naqqar-yiana, dharmsala, schools, 
priest quarters, etc. 

Civil buildings have retained the traditional Maratha type. But their 
decoration has become very rich. The gigantic heavy woodwork of the 
public palace courts often is plain as it had originally been covered with 
brocades. But in the more intimate interior courts, especially in the ladies’ 



THE ABT OP THE MABATHAS AND ITS PEOBLEMS 


439 


quarters with the tulsi flower-stands and ‘Mughal’ fountains in the centre, 
it is delicate and generally beautifully carved. The wooden columns are a 
last development of the late Mughal type as it had evolved since Aurangzeb 
and Muhammad Shah. The arches, though cusped hke late Mughal arches, 
we low, broken in the centre and end in heavy knobs so that they seem to be 
not so much an evolution from the latter, but rather a cross-breed between 
the Mughal-Hajput arch and the Southern Sindu bracket. The origin of most 
of the other wood carvings can be traced to the Muslim (also pre-Mughal) 
tradition, Gujarat and JElajputana (peacock motif in several variants). The 
walls between and behind these heavy, almost black wooden arcades are 
decorated with small late Mughal niches or large wall paintings. Also on top 
of the arcades, friezes of small paintings were sometimes added (Shanvar and 
Konkerwadas, Poona), whereas .the wooden ceilings were decked with a 
wonderful ornament work of thin, carved wood ledges. The fountains in the 
courts and halls have not the shallow basins of classic Mughal architecture, 
but are narrow and deep, like those of Akbar’s and Jahan^’s time, with 
complicated bundles of Mughal columns crowned by lotus buds for the water 
jets. The arrangement of the basins, often with a thin, curved brim, is very 
beautiful, and reveals a thorough acquaintance with the Mughal Charbagh. 
Palaces of this type are common in Poona, but can also be foimd in the whole 
area of Maratha expansion, Satara, Aundh, Kolhapur, Nasik, Chandor, 
Baroda, Indore, klaheshwar and Nagpur. 

In Indore, however, Mughal-Rajput influence had already been very 
strong whereas in Gwalior and Ujjain it actually predominated. Ahalya 
Bai’s buildings, it is true, strictly follow the simple Maratha tradition, but the 
temples of her successor Yeshwant Bao Holkar (1796-1811) represent an inter- 
mediate form between the Maratha (genuine ;$ikhara) type and the late Bajput 
temple with its broad pent roofs and open chhattris. The enclosure of these 
temples belongs to the pure North Indian tradition, and likewise many samadhs 
at the Chhattri Bagh of Indore. The Gorkhi palace of Daulat Bao Sindhia 
(1794r-1827) at Gwalior is pure Mughal architecture. His and Jankoji EE’s 
(1827-43) shrines at Gwalior, that of Banoji (1726-45) at Ujjain and the 
‘Chhattri’ Temple of Baija Bai at the same place might as well have been 
erected at some Bajput court, except for small detafls revealing their Maratha 
connections. 

Sculpture and painting of this time are not of special quality, but they 
have a fresh original note. The imitation of Mediaeval sculptures is, wherever 
possible, overcome and, perhaps under Bajput or Gujarati inspiration, super- 
seded by an attempt towards a realism describing contemporary life, especially 
in the flgures of dwarapalas, gandharvas and apsaras. Thus the chief entrance 
of later Maratha temples is generally decorated with rather stiff and gaudy, 
realistic statues of contemporary Maratha warriors, standing or sitting on 
elephants. The flgures of dancing girls and musicians, generally in the late 
Hindu or Dellii-Luoknow dress, not seldom have a considerable charm. Also 
purely mythological sculpture has become infected by these tendencies where 



440 


B. O. LAW VOLXriilB 


especially the Eadha-Krishna cycle, folly developed first in Eajput art, gave 
foil scope to the inventiveness of the mason. 

In this time also a gennine Maratha school of painting finally developed- 
Mughal and Eajput painters have continued to bo fashionable at the rich 
courts deep into the nineteenth century. These paintings stand nearest to 
certain types of the Jaipur and Jodlipur schools, and it is well possible that 
from there artists went over to the Maratha service when as a result of civil 
wars and the Maratha devastations those splendid art centres passed through a 
period of misery and desolation. At our present stage of knowledge these 
paintings are difficult to identify, but often betray themselves by architoctinal 
and dress featmes charaoteristio for the Maratha tradition. Besides this 
refined court art, however, a popular school grew up, apparently trained by the 
just mentioned masters. For the wliitowashed brick walls of the Maratha 
palaces invited to a decoration by wall paintings. Yet these walls also 
demanded a large and rather summary treatment which left no^scope for the 
technical subtilities of the miniatures, but encouraged the same naive natural 
freshness which characterizes contemporary sculpture. And in imitation of 
these wall paintings also a new type of miniatures developed, of rather crude 
technique, summary treatment, but good observation of life. The figures 
are heavy, if not fat, eyes rather over-enlarged, legs generally too short, the 
standing posture often out of balance, but else expression and movements are 
vivid. Landscape remains undeveloped. Favourite colours are blue, green 
and yellow. It is at present difficult to say how much the Maratha school of 
Tanjore has contributed to this style, or has been shaped by it. But so much 
we can say that early in the eighteenth century the court style of the Tanjore 
paintings still had been late Mughal. On the other hand are certain charac- 
teristics of the popular Maratha pictures to be found not only in Tanjore, but 
in the whole South of that time, especially the summary treatment, the pre- 
dilection for round lines and fat figures. And at least we have one case of 
an iconographic type migrating from the South up to the Panjab Himalaya 
vw, Tanjore, the Maratha country, the Vallabhacharya temples of Eajputana 
and Mathura : the image of the baby Krishna lying on a lotus leaf and sucking 
its toe. 

The industrial arts have not yet been explored systematically, but they 
seem to have received strong influences both from Eajputana and Tanjore, 
and to have undergone the same transformation towards a rich, but heavy 
type. 

From the death of the second Madho Eao (1796) to the middle of the 
nineteenth century we may reckon the last phase of Maratha art, that of 
decadence and disintegration. One source of this decadence was the demorali- 
zation of Maratha society, extreme individualism, corruption and licentiousness. 
Its counterpart in art was a wild and exuberant degeneration of forms in 
which the organic function of forms was sacrificed to the wliim of fancy, and a 
not less unbridled absorption of foreign imports, North Indian, Chinese and 
several types of European art. Against purists it must, however, be stressed 



THU ABT OF THE MAEATHAS AND ITS FBOBDEIVIS 


441 


that not this absorption of foreign inspirations was the morbid aspect of 
decadence; it was actually the last healthy self-defence. For not purity of 
form, but creative capacity is the sign of a living art. And the petrifaction of 
forms following on the heyday of a pure style is the real decadence, the inriRr 
‘death against which those ‘esotistic’ e^eriments represent the first progress 
on a way through a long crisis towards a new creative art. We should, there- 
fore, not despise them. 

The temple architecture of the last period is represented by two degenerate 
types and one last, poor renascence type. In the first the system of super- 
posed sham chhattris has been reduced to a single storey, whereas the amalaka- 
lotus dome has grown to excessive dimensions. In the second the ^ikhara has 
been simplified to a fluted cone crowned by a small lotus dome or by a genuine 
amalaka, the latter a loan from the next type. For the renascence ^ikhara is 
again an imitation of the Mediaeval type, but without its elegant fo rms ; it 
has lost that perfect parabolic contour, symbol of a perfect balance of masses; 
its outline now passes from a rigid vertical into two simple circle segments. 
Better, however, are some temple enclosures such as that of the Gfepal Mandir 
at Ujjain (1833). The dynamic iutensification of its late Mughal-Rajput forms 
from the latter wings towards the facade of the central entrance would have 
aroused the enthusiasm of every Furopean Baroque architect. 

This overwhelming invasion of late Mughal-Rajput forms, especially of 
the innumerable slim bays and balconies so characteristic for the Hawa Mahal 
at Jaipur or the Moti klahal in Jodhpur Fort, is the main feature of the first 
phase of late Maratha palace architecture. But they are cramped between 
the traditional Maratha half-timbered work with its completely opposite 
style tendencies of linearism and simplicity (Chief Gate of Indore Palace, 
Western Naqqar-!^aua of the old Bhonslewada at Nagpur, Nana Famavis’s 
house in Poona, etc.). And the effect is anything but satisfactory, in spite of 
the gigantic dimensions of some of these buildings. In the woodwork, 
especially at the Vishram Bagh at Poona, an outspoken Chinese influence 
becomes evident, originally imported probably via Goa where we have a 
Maratha temple with Chinese roof at Ponda, then via Bombay. This Chinese 
influence seems to be responsible also for the later type of Maratha brackets 
at Baroda, though they have quickly become completely Indianized. And 
finally also for certain heavy furniture from Vij'apur in Baroda State. 

The next stage brings an invasion of eighteenth century French 
architecture and even furniture in an already half-Ihdianized form, mainly 
via Lucknow. As both eighteenth centuiy French and Indian art represented 
late styles, the adaptation was easy, and the amalgamation and mixture of 
the individual elements remarkable. The French decorative forms were 
simply imposed on the traditional Indian architecture system, in many cases 
replacing gimilar Indian forms, in exactly the same manner in which in the 
North European Renaissance of the sixteenth century an Italian decoration 
had been grafted on a French, German, Spanish or English late Gothic tradi- 
tion, or in which the French Rococo had been grafted on eighteenth and early 



442 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


nineteenth century Ottoman-Turkish art. A curious feature of this architec- 
ture lies in certain pseudo-Chinese buildings, inspired not directly from China, 
but by the ‘Chinoiserie’ of Rococo Europe, the Western counterpart of the 
egotistic tendencies which in India the Luclmow Rococo and Louis XVI 
(Georgian) style represented. An example in Lucknow is the Sikandar Bagh, , 
a Maratha one, the pavilions of the Tulsi Bagh in Nagpur. The chief 
heritage of this period in Indian furniture consists of the big lustres everywhere 
to be found in Maratha palaces and temples. They represent a simplified imita- 
tion of the famous Venetian glass lustres, and were later on often replaced by 
genuine Venetian imports. The Victorian English style, however, came into 
fashion only about 1830-50. It was never genuinely absorbed and spelt the 
final death of late Indian, including Maratha, art. 

In the sculpture of this time two tendencies can be traced. One was the 
decay of traditional sculpture down to a completely degenerated type reminding 
of negro fetishes. The other was the introduction of a misunderstood Western 
naturalism grafted on the traditional Maratha ideals of beauty. This unplea- 
sant product lacks the strength of life expression which is the prerequisite of 
beauty in a naturalistic style, but also the perfect pattern which alone raises 
a mere artisan tradition to the level of genuine beauty. This clay sculpture 
has been used for the funerary doUs of the Maratha samadhs and many house- 
hold and procession idols, and its tradition is still alive. 

In the paintings the balance between debased Mughal-Rajput and popular 
Maratha style remained the same. Of this time we have luxurious rooms in 
the Moti Bagh at Indore, the Tambekarwada and the Vitthal Mandir at Baroda, 
etc. decorated with waU paintings as well as varnished wooden panels. The 
details leave much to be desired, but the general effect is charming. An 
interesting feature lies in the copies from European art, Finglish prints of the 
Regency and Erenoh ones of the periods of Napoleon, the Restauration and 
Louis Philippe. In the ‘Adalatwada at Satara, for instance, we can see, 
amongst other pictures, the entiy of Napoleon’s armies into Berlin in 1806. 
Occasionally also copies from Chinese paintings are to be found. But whereas 
all these copies have had no influence on Maratha art, Chinese underglass 
painting in that time created a new Maratha school of Indian painting. In 
China this technique was known at least since the later Ming dynasty. It was 
introduced in Europe towards the end of the sixteenth century, but was popular 
only in folk art. It turned up in Poona first during the last years of Nana 
Famavis as a purely Chinese import, even with Chinese subjects. But soon 
we find also portraits of Maratha rulers and sardars, princesses and fashionable 
dancing girls. Then also the style became more and more Indian and spread 
over the whole sphere of Maratha influence, from Nagpur, Gwalior and Baroda 
to Kolhapur, Seringapatam, Mysore and Tanjore. The origin of the Mica 
pictures of Bengal has not yet been explored, but it seems probable that they 
were inspired by this school of Sino-Maratha underglass painting. With the 
growing mfluence of Ei^lish civilization in the wake of the railways also under- 
glass painting withered away, like all the late schools of Indi an pictorial art. 



THE AKT OF THE MABATHAS AND ITS PEOBLEMS 443 

This survey has made it sufficiently clear that Maratha art represents a 
special and distinct style of Indian art, indeed the last one brought forth 
before the collapse of the nineteenth century. There remains to us only the 
task to define its characteristics, the relation of its component elements and 
the spirit weldhig them together into a distinct style. The basic fact for our 
analysis must be the realization that the Maratha empire represented not only 
a national movement, but also a Hindu revolution against Muslim supremacy. 
Its cultural ideal, therefore, had to be a Hindu renaissance. It was, however, 
not an archaistic attempt to revive the past, but a living renaissance in the 
spirit of its own time. Therefore the Maratha attitude was discerning 
selective. In military architecture the Muslim tradition was, on the whole, 
continued, for before the coming of the French and British it was the best 
and most up-to-date fortification system. Neither was civil architecture a 
revival of the past. The Hindu rural house of the Maratha country was 
developed, on the model of the many7storeyed palaces of Bijapur, into a new 
palace t3rpe, retaining the national half-timbered system of haUs on stone 
terraces, closed by whitewashed brick fillings. But the national rustic temple 
architecture had been too poor as to revive the splendours of past Hindu 
glory. Thus here alone a conscious revival was attempted with the help of 
such traditions as had survived in the Blamatik, Gujarat and Rajputana. But 
neither here a slavish imitation of the past was envisaged, and after the first 
oclectio reconstructions soon an original style developed. 

The chief factor in the making of this new style was the introduction of 
contemporary Indian court art in the decoration of those basic architectural 
types of the national Hindu renaissance. Only at the start we can distinguish 
between Hindu and Muslim elements. For to whatever roots we may trace 
the individual motifs, in eighteenth century Indian art they were fused into 
one style employed likewise by Hindus and Muslims. We may even say that, 
by that time even the classical Mughal style had become more Hindu than 
Muslim. For it had been taken over by the Rajputs and was developed by 
them in a new, national Hindu spirit, with its symbolic sculptural inter- 
pretation of architectural forms, its system of decorative organization by a 
multiplication of devalued original motifs, and its musicality of simplified 
lines in painting. Thus the Mughal-Rajput style — ^which had absorbed also 
the Deccani tradition — ^had become acceptable to Hindus, and formed, as the 
luxury style of the period, the chief stock of all decoration amongst the 
Marathas, especially in masonry, plasterwork, painting and small luxury 
articles. This explains also its decisive influence on the transformation of the 
^ikhara of the Maratha temple. For as the ^ikhara had been a composite of 
ffTTinll decorative motifs, it could so easily change its character from a spire tower 
to a chhattri tower. Only in wood carving the stronger Gujarati tradition 
predominated, until it, too, was swallowed up by the new tendencies. But 
besides these leading currents there always remained a flotsam of archaic 
motifs, heritage of the originally provincial character of Maratha art. This 
survival of archaic motifs in provincial art is a very important problem whicb 



444 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


needs further study and will change many of our conventional identifications 
and chronological allocations in Indian art history. 

But what was the spirit welding these forms together into a unity ? The 
Marathas had been a nation of fi:ugal herdsmen and tillers of the soil. They 
had become mighty not as an emigrant aristocracy, but as raiders, for a long 
period always returning to their home country, and oven when settling down 
far away, stiD. with their hearts in the poor, but healthy Maratha highlands. 
Peasants are conservative, and a renaissance movement again is conservative. 
Maratha art has been conservative. Peasants are simple and practical, not 
sophists nor ideologists. Maratha art has never had a doctrine, it was eclectic 
and assimilative in all minor questions. Peasants, especially hillmen, preserve 
a certain heavy coarseness. This coarse heaviness and solidity have liliewise 
been characteristics of Maratha art. The Maratha empire builders, however, 
had also been children of their time, of a declining Indian civilization, tom 
between brutal power politics and dharma, poverty and luxury, traditionalism 
and search for new inspirations, sensuality and mysticism : An Indian Baroque 
Age 1 And Baroque is the character of Maratha art, not replete with quiet 
harmony, but full of tensions : tension between stasis and movement, simplicity 
and excessive decoration (as in the Spanish Churrigueresque style), grossness 
and religiosity, national and foreign elements. And as the European Baroque 
ended in the playful form dissolution of the Rococo and in the exotic 
Chinois erie, likewise the Maratha Baroque dissolved at the end of the 
eighteenth century into a fancy style and then into an exotism of partly 
Chinese, partly Rococo-Western origin. It was the last national art of pre- 
industrial India. It was not one of the highlights of Indian civilization, but 
in any case an art deserving careful study and appreciation. 


RUDAKI, THE FATHER OF NEO-PERSIAH POETRY 

By 

Db, M. Ishaqub 

In the roll of famous poets and writers to whom Tran is indebted for the 
revival of her language and literature, Rudaki’s name deserves the first place. 
He refined the language, enriched its vocabulary and made it capable of 
expressing all kinds and shades of thought. He is not unduly revered as the 
father of neo-Persian poetry — the inaugurator of the new era of poetic com- 
position in Persian. 

Iran came under the Arab sway after the decisive battle fought at 
Nahavand in A.D. 642. The Arabic language and literature reigned supreme 
in the country for well over two centuries. It was only during the T?ahirid 
period (A.D. 820—72) that the Iranian Muse began to sing again after her age- 
long silence. The Saff^ids (A.D. 868—903), being of Iranian origin, by their 
patronage gave a strong impetus to the beginning of Persian poetry. No poet 


BtJDAKl, THE FATHER OF NEO-FERSIAN POETRY 


445 


of outstanding merit is loioum to have appeared during these two periods. The 
Samanid princes (A.I>. 874-999) undoubtedly played a glorious r61e in that 
they furthered the revival of both Persian prose and poetry by liberally 
patronizing the literary luminaries of the period, and it was in their magnificent 
. court that Brildaki and Daqiqi, the precursor of Pirdausl, fiourished. 

The name of the poet, as given by ‘Awfi, is Abu ‘Abdu’llah Ja'far 
Mufiammad ar-Bitidaki as-Samarkandi.^ Different TazMra (memoir) writers 
have given his name differently. Sam'ani in his Kitabu’l Ansab has given the 
name as Abu ‘Abdu’Uah Ja'far bin Mufiammad bin TTaHm bin ‘Abdu’r- 
iRa^man bin Adam ar-JRudaki ash-Sha‘ir as-Samarkandi.^ Abm ad Manini has 
adopted this name in his commentary on the Ta'nleh-i Datdatshah 

in his TazkiTd records his name as *Abu*l-Hasan Sudagi. * 

The poet was a native of Banuj, a village in the district of Biudak near 
Samarkand. He adopted his pen-name as *B>udaki’, because he hailed from 
Biudak. Some writers have sought to esplain the term ‘Rudaki’ by saying 
that the poet was so called because he could play on rud® (harp). Tliis 
explanation is obviously wrong, because in that case, as pointed out by Sa‘id-i 
Nafisi,® the poet would have been called Budi (and not Rudaki) or rather 
Rud-nawaz, Rudzan or Rudsaz which is the term for one who can play on rud. 
Rudak, a diminutive form of Rud, has not been met with. The term ‘Ruda^ *, 
as spelt by Jackson, Browne and other orientalists, is obviously erroneous. 
As the poet passed most of his life in the court of the Samanid kings at Bukhara, 
some of the memoir-writers think that he was a native of Bukhara. 

The exact date of birth of the poet is not known. But by a rough calcula- 
tion made jfrom the internal evidences at our disposal, it may be said that he 
was bom about the middle of the third century of the Hegira. According to 
Sam'ani he died in A.H. 329.^ The following verses of the poet himself go to 
show that he lived to a ripe old age® : — 

^ i y j jro 

. . > 

y j j; ■'-r' 

Grown so old am I and thou too art not young, 

Pull of ■wrinkles is my bosom and bent art thou like a bow. 


1 *AwfI, I/ubabii’l-AU}ab, ii, 6, ed. E. Q. Browno, in th9 Persian BKstorical Texts Series, 
Leyden, 1903. 

* ‘Abdu’l-Korim b. Muhammad os-Soma'anl, Kitabu’l-Ansab (Arabic text, facsimile), 
publislied by the E. J. W. Gibb Memorial (Vol. XX, 1013), fol. 262. 

s Al;imad Manini, AlfatJiu’l-Wahbi ‘Ala Ta‘nkh~i AK Na^'l~'Vtbi, i, 62. 

4 Dawlat^oh, Tadhliiratu’ah-Shv'ara, p. 31, ed. Brcwne, in the Persian Historical Texts 
Series, Leyden, 1901. 

« Ibid., p. 31. 

•* Ahwal u Ash‘dr-i Abd ‘Abdu’lldh Ja'far Mxihammad RudalA Samar^andl, Vol. IE, p. 466, 
Tehran, 1310 A.H. (solar). 

7 Samo'ani, Kitdbu'l-Ansdb (Arabic text, facsimile), published by E. J. W. Gibb Memorial 
(Vol. XX, 1913), fol. 262. 

® AsacU, Lughat-i Furs, p, 24, ed. Paul Horn, Berlin, 1897 and p. 76, ed. ‘Abbas Iqbal, 
Tehran, 1319 A.H. (solar). 



446 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Elsewhere he says: 

ijj jll” J; V ^ Jr* ^y. 

A 

jljl j- Lap tP»9j ^ (j* j cu*£^ 4»Lj jjlS^ 

*■* ' 

Wore out and fell all the teeth I had, 

They were teeth, nay they were bright lamps; 

• ••••••••• 

Now the time hath changed and changed am I, 

Gtet a beggar’s stick, for ’tis the time to have a stick and a wallet. 

And again he writes : 

jj CjiS y J> jrtJ 

Exceeding old and decrepit I had grown 
His favours made me young anew^. 

Erom these verses we understand that the poet’s skin got wrinkled with 
age. He had lost all his teeth and had grown so decrepit that he needed a 
stick for support. The age of a man of this description should be between 
seventy and eighty, if not more. If we suppose that he lived for seventy years, 
then it may be said that he was bom about the year 269 A.H. 

‘Awfi says that RudaM was bom blind. ‘Abdu’r-Rahman Jami in his 
Bdhdristdn, Amin Ahmad Razi in his Haft-i Iqllm and Reza Quli Khan Hidayat 
in his Majmau'l-Fusahd have shared ‘Awfi’s view. But their view is not 
correct due to the foUowmg facts * : — 

(i) His similes are so exact and tme that they cannot be expected to 
be from the pen of a person who is bom blind. 

As for example : 

kSjj j 0 j y^ 

Off and on the Sun peeps out of the cloud 
Like unto a lover hiding from his rival. 

1 Asadl, Lugliat-i Furs, p. 14, ed. Paul Horn, Berlin, 1897 and p. 36, ed. ‘Abbas Iqbal, 
Tehran, 1319 A.H. (solar). 

® The Egyptian writer Jamalu’ddin Muhanunad b. Nubata in his work Sarhu'l-'Uyiin fi 
Sharh-i Sisalal-i ibn-i Zaidun, while dealing with the biography of Baslishar b. Burd (put to death 
in A.D. 783), says that the poet who was bom blind used such similes as could hardly be e:qpected 
from a blind poet and adds that the poet when asked how he could use such similes replied that 
when the physical eye was unable to see, the power of the eye of the mind was' intensified: 

J tdJi 0® i3" J j-i* L .\^V' J 

4— >- ji jZA <lJl jbi U; JLSJl 

[p. 165, Alexandria, A.H. 1290]. 



BDDAKi, THE EATHER OE HEO-PEESlAN POETRY 


447 


Elsewhere he says: 

y o1i 

t 

That tiny mouth of thine is, as it were, a pomegranate out 
open. 


(ii) Colours play an important part in some of his verses, viz. 
Vr" owwlj -CU (jljistfj 6l j 


The Sun would hide itself, if thou imveilest thy face red as 
tulip 

And that chin would at once resemble an apple if the apple 
had a black mole on it. 

Also 

«» 

One who saw that red wine confiised it for molten ruby. 

In the following verse he praises the beautiful white set of teeth 
he had in his younger days: 


J J ^y •■5 J JL^«> 

a_j» (jl J ^y ojt.* 

They were as white as pure silver and resembled a row of pearls. 
They were as bright as the Morning Star and as clear as the 
drops of rain. 

(iii) The word ^ aj (i.e. I saw) used in some of his verses definitely 
proves that he was not bom blind; e.g. 

OjFr Jf» 

oiU (y JjLs- jLrlj^ jl 


At daybreak I saw the Sun, as it shone, hastening westward 
from Khurasan. 

Again elsewhere he says: 

IjJll j\) eiy y *-^4 

I J3i\sf 0^ y j; iSj^W 

Near Sarakhs I saw a hoopoo, its cries would pierce the clouds, 
I saw it clad in a little mantle of variegated hues. 



448 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


(iv) Both Daiilatshah and Hamdu’llah Mustawfi are silent so far as 
the blindness of the poet is concerned. 

I^om these arguments we come to the conclusion that the poet was not 
blind from his birth. But it may be said that he became blind in his advanced . 
age. Mn.-nini in his commentary on the Ta*Tikh-i Tamlnl, following Najati, 
says that the poet was blinded towards the close of his life.i If that be so, 
he must have been blinded either on account of some eye-disease or by way 
of punishment then prevalent. He might have been punished for his close 
association with the minister Abul-Fazl Muhammad Bal'ami (d. Safar 10, 
329/Nov. 14, 940) who was deprived of his office in A.H. 326/A.D. 937-38 for 
his leanings towards the Isma'ili seot.2 

Another important point that may be considered here is that later poets 
like Daqiqi,8 Abu Zarra'a Mu'ammari^ and Nasir-i Khusraw,® while speaking 
of Rudaki’s blindness, have said notliing about his blindness from birth. 

B^om the different accounts at our disposal, it appears that the poetic 
effiisions of Budaki was very great. ‘Awfi says that according to a narrator 
the verses of Eudald filled one hundred volumes,® while Jam!, on the authority 
of the Sharh-i Yamlnl, states that the poet composed a million and three 
hundred thousand verses.’ The poet Rashidi® of Samarkand says that he 
counted the verses of Rudaki and found that they amounted to one million 
and three hundred thousand and adds that if counted with greater care the 
verses might be found to be greater in number. Of this fabulous output, 
only a scanty remnant has come down to us. The Teheran edition of the 
so-called ‘Divan-i RudaJa’ 8 contains only a few poems that may be accepted 

1 Asadi’s Lughat-i Furs, ed. P. Horn, 66 and ed, Iqbal, p. 270. 

2 tjf J J*., ji 

I .» 

2 Daqiqi aays: 

CCH 0“JJ oT J tJ-lV 

' ^ 

* Abu Zarra'a Mu'atnmarl of Gurgan, a poet of later Samaaid period, when Aat-Ai^ if he 
could write poems like BndaM, is said to have replied: 

^ 4 S^JJ y 0^ 0^ yC Jijj t tsJjJkt 

jlj* jjis- jjUjc 3I cjj, jf JjT j JC jlj* 

C'Awft, ii, p. 10]. 

® Na^ir-i Ehusraw lias a reference to Budakl’s blindness in the verse : 

Cy. cAjj ^ tjv oT xt j 0*3 jtiil 

« LubSb ii 7 lOtvan-i Nasir-i Khusraw, p. 323, Tehran, A.H. 1304-7 (solar) ]. 

’ BaMristan, p. 91, Tehran, A.H. 1311 (solar). 

® The verse referred to is: 

Jil J’\ j/l A jlj* Ij j1 

® Edited by §adru’l-Kuttab Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. ‘All Amull, dedicated to Farldun 
MItza and published in A.H. 1316. 


449 


RUDAKl, THE FATHER OF NEO-PERSIAN POETRY 

as Bfidald’s compositions.! Eth6 has coUeoted fifty-two fragments amounting 
to two Iiundi-ed and forty-two couplets.2 To these we should now add the 
lines quoted by Asadi (d. A.H. 465) in his LugJiat-i Furs. In this oldest 
extant lexicographical work, Btldaki has been cited one hundred and sixty-one 
times. Among these quotations wliioh are mostly single rhymed distichs there 
are sixteen couplets 2 of the lost Magnavi 'Kallla va Dimna’. Twenty-nine 
distichs are also available in al-Mu*jam fi Ma‘dylr-i AsFari’l-‘Ajam by 
Shamsu’d-Din Muhammad b. Qais ar-Barf.^ 


! Soo tho article Riidahi and Pscudo-RQddlci' by 13. IDenison Ross published in the Journal 
of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, October, 1924, pp. 609-44. 

Hormann 13th6, Rudagt, der Somanidea diebter, in. Nachiichten von der ESniglichen 
Gosollsehnft dor Wissonsobaftor su G6ttingen, 1873, pp. 678-742. 

3 Soo Paul Horn’s Introduction to Aaadi's neu persisches TVorterbueh (Lughat~i Furs), 
Berlin, 1897. 

* A treatiso on tho Prosody and Poetic Art of tho Persians \mtten early in tho seventh 
century of tho Hogira, oditod by DUrza Muhammad Qozvlnl and E. Q. Browne and published 
in tho E, J. W. Gibb Alomorial Series, Vol. X, 1909. 

Tho 'Kalila va Dimna' holds a prominent place in Arabic and Persian literature and is 
tho source of many fables which aboimd in tho two languages. So, a brief notice of tho work 
will not bo out of place bore. A copy of the original Sanskrit work was taken from Iniha to 
Iron by a learned physician named Burzuyeh (Burzoo) under the orders of the Sasanian Wing 
Kliusraw I, better Icnown 03 Anushlrwan tho Just (A.O. 631-79). It was immediately 
translated into Pahlavi. Prom tho Pahlavi version, tho book was translated into Syriac under 
tlio title 'Hailing wa Pamnag’ by Bud about AJD. 670. It was translated into Ambic about 
A.D. 670 by Buzbih hotter known as ‘Abdu’llah Ibnu’l-MugaSa' (d. circa A.D. 760) imder tho 
patronago of the second ‘Abbasid Caliph Mun^ur (A.D. 764-76). Prom Arabic it was rendered 
into Persian under tho orders of tho Somonid No^ H b. Ahmad (A.D. 913-42) and clothed 
in verso by Budahi. Again, it was translated from the Arabic version of 'Abdu’llah by 
Abu’l-Ma'uli Ha$ru’lluh b. AEuliammad b. ‘Abdu’l ^mld Munshl under the title 'Kalila va 
Dimna’ in A.D, lI41-44tmdor tho order of tho Gbaznavid Sultan Bahram Sh&b in (A J>. 1118-62) 
and tills Fovised translation under the name of Kalila va Dimna has since been current in Iran. 
Although tho Pahlavi translation has been lost, the Arabic version is still extant and may be 
verified with tho help of tho translations into Latin, Greek, Syriac, Turkish, Hebrew, Italian, 
Pronch ond English. Tho next Persian version is that made by Husain b. ‘All Wa'iz-i- K Ss hif I 
towards tho ond of tho hfloonth century A.D. It was dedicated by him to Amir S h ai kh Ahmad 
Suliayli, tho Minister of tho Sultan Husain Mirza, a descendant of Tamerlane. Tho version is 
theroforo entitled ‘Antvdr-i-Suhayli’ (the Lights of Conopus). Although the author aimed at 
simplifying tho earlier version by Nosru’llah, his style is more florid and bombastio. Tho next 
Persian version is that mado by Abu'l-Parl b. Mubarak 'Allami (d. AJI. 1602), the Minister of 
Emiioror Akbar, in A.D. 1687-88. This version is based on Na§ru’llah’s translation and is 
cbaractorizod by its plain and elegant language ond is known by the name of tho * ‘lydr-i Danish 
or ‘The Touclistone of Wisdom’, whicli as a popular version has retained its place os a standard 
work in Persian literature. 

Very fow books in the world has attorned so much success or have been translated into so 
many languages as this work. It lias undergone careful ond critical e xam i n ation at the hands 
of tho Oriontalista who have como to tho definite conclusion that tho original text of the work 
is tho Paiichatantra of San^t literature. Tho name 'KalUa va Dimna’ has been taken fi:om 
Karatako ond Damonoko, a fable in tho Parlehatantra. Tho original Sanskrit work is said to 
bovo boon composed by a Brahmin of Ceylon named Bidpay under tho orders of o king named 
Dabsholim. 

Por further details see Sir John Malcolm’s Sketches of Persia, pp. 71—74, London, 1861, and 
The Ocean of Story (Somadeva’s Katha Sarit SSgara) tr. by 0. H. Tawney, pp. v-xxm- and the 
Genealogical Table of tho Paiichatantra facing p. 242 of Volume V London, 1926. 

29 


450 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


BudaM’s fame also rests on his versification of the KaliUi va Dimna^ 
which he \mdertook under the munificent patronage of the Samanid King 
Nasr n hin Afimad (A.H. 301-31/A.D. 913-42) and of his Minister Ahu’l- 
Fazl Barami. He versified a Persian adaptation of an Arabic version firom 
the Pahlavi translation of the Sanskrit original. In his SMhndma, Eirdaua ^ 
has referred to BudaM’s versification of the KaMa in the following words: — 


(j 1 ^ 

jl jJj'l ^ 

jli *Jlii oil jT* j 

o\fr -sjl jS 

* JjJil _j>- J ^ 


^ Ij" y/' 

4)\c 


ur-x*l 1^1 J jp^ jljl 


OV J i/* 

ij ejiT'lj- 


Klalila was translated from Pahlavi into Arabic, as you may hear it 
read today, 

It remained in Arabic till Nasr became the lord of the age on earth. 

His noble minister Abu’l-Pazl, who was his treasurer in respect of lore, 
ordered it to be rendered into Persian and Dari, and it was readily 
executed. 

Thereafter when he (Na§r) heard (it) an idea presented itself to him. 
He expressed his wish in public and in private that some memorial of 
himseht should survive in the world, 

Headers were appointed, they read out the whole book to BudaM^ 

He so linked together the scattered (words) as you’d say that he had 
threaded pregnant pearls. 

BudaM was amply rewarded for this work. Prom the following verse, it 
is understood that he received a sum of 40,000 Dirhams; — 


-jy j S^JJ f J* tW 

® jj-SS" jj 4IJS* oi ^ Uac 

BfidaM received Forty thousand dirhams from his patron for the 


versification of the Kallla. 


^ Eirdaiisi, ShShnama, viii, 2506-7 (ed. Sa‘id-i NafieS), publislied by Setoukhim, Tehran, 
1936, also The Shdhnama of Firdausi by Warner and Warner, vii, 430-31, Triibner’s Oriental 
Series, London, 1915. 

*• Here is another reference to Bndaki’s blindness. 

of this verse is attributed to ‘XJnsurl, the poet laureate of the court of 

Mahmud of Qbazna* 

29B 



RUDAKi, THE FATHER OF NEO-FERSIAN POETRT 


451 


Unfortunately this valuable work, excepting some fragments ^ that have 
chanced to be preserved in various Persian lexicons and other works, has 
been lost. It was a Mas^vi poem written in the Ramal-i MaqsUr hexameter.® 
Its opening verse is said to have run as follows : — 

Besides tliis the poet is said to have written other Mofrmvls, namely, the 
'Davran-i Aftab\^ the *Ard'isu'n-NafaHs\*^ and the ‘Sindabadndma'fi 

According to Hajji Khalifa (d. A.D. 1658) the poet also wrote a Persian 
lexicon called ‘Tdju’l-Masddir’,^ now no longer extant. 

That Rudald had a poetic genius of a high order is admitted at all hands. 
He rightly deserves the encomiums which were lavished upon him during 
his lifetime and were continued after his death. Shahid of Ballch in a verse 
cited by ‘Awfi says that ‘Bravo! and Well Bone! are a compliment in the 
case of other poets, but in the case of Rudald these words would be an imperti- 
nence’.'^ Kisa’i® and Nizami ‘Aruzi® of Samarqand have called him the 
‘Master of Poets’ while Ma‘rufii® of Balkh has acknowledged him as the 
‘Sultan of Poets’. Daqiqi,ii the precimsor of Firdausi, says that for him to 
praise one who had received panegyrics from Rudaki would be to bring dates 
to Hajar.i® In' the verses quoted below, even ‘Unsuii, the poet laureate of 


1 According to tho calculation of Sa‘M-i NofM only 88 voreos of tliia work has come down 
to US. (See liis AlitoSl-u-Ash'Sr-i Abu 'Abdu’Hah Ja'far Rudala Satnarqanil, ii, 588.) 

2 

3 Farhang-i JahSngtfi. 

* Hgjjl Khalifa, Kashfu’s-iftmun, ii, HI, Constantinople, A.H:. 1311. 

6 See Paul Horn’s Introduction to Asadi’a Neupersichea Wdrterbuch {Liighat-i Furs), p. 21, 
Berlin, 1897. 

« ?Sjji Khallfo, Kashfu's-^»niln, i, 212, Oonstontinople, A.H. 1311. 

7 cu-l? iSaJ: J S^JJ 6'^ cuJ— 9-1 J ^ h ijljel- 

‘Awfl, LwbSbu'l-AMb (ed. E. Q. Browne), ii, 6, London-Loyden, 1903. 

« J\S Jy JG Arf »y, 

Lughat-i Fun (ed. Paul Horn), p. 10. 

0 CU-* oh-! oW 

‘Awft, Lubab., p. 7. 

« yr j Olfr j' 

. ‘Awfl, LubSb., p. 6. 

jj »j>. f'*! 6-^ '■* ^ 

A j- 'v. ^ -'' y 

‘Awfi, LubSb., p. 6. 

M According to the outhor of the Itharn'l-Basd, Hojor was the capital of Bahrein. 



452 


B. 0. LAW TOLXTMB 


Sultan Mahmud, admits that the ghazals of Biidald were superior to his own 
and that with all his efforts he failed to produce a ghazal like that of Kiidaki : 

^y. 

ij S^jj 

The Samanid prince Nasr 11 was charmed by the poetic genius of Rudaki 
and attached him to his court. Fortune smiled upon him and honour and 
riches were abrmdantly showered upon him. On one occasion, when he had 
completed the versification of the Kallla va Dimna, the prince rewarded him 
with forty thousand dirhams.i He lived in a princely style in the Samanid 
court. It is said that he owned two hundred slaves cla.d in rich liveries and 
that he would require four hundred camels to carry hisluggage.2 A reference 
to his vast riches is met with in the poem written in his old age when he had 
fallen on evil days. All the memoir-writers are unanimous in their opinion 
regarding his wealth. Poets like TJnsuriS and Azraqi^ haye envied his lot. 

His name has been indissolubly connected with that of Ins royal patron 
Nasr n by a charming anecdote related by all Tazkira-writers. Once Nasr, 
accompanied by the nobles of his court, went to Badghis near Herat and he 
was so charmed by the beauty of that place that he remained there for four 
years and showed no sign of retumiug to his capital Bukhara, the stink and 
filthiness of which the poets never ceased to attack. The nobles were yearning 
for their home and prayed to Rudald to sing to the king some poem which 
would awaken in him a desire to go back to Bukhara. One morning Rudaki 
improvised the following verses and sang them apparently to the harp before 
the king: 

jjI jU* It Ij U 

JjT 


JjJ \Sy 

ySj j ibi <^1 
obe"i j uumI ebt jru 


See before. 

^ Cf. Jaml: 

j-ju 

OrJ^ j\^ A J* * y, 

3 ‘Unhurt says; 

jjiS* jS jJJT i-j ^ L_hs 

4 AzcaqI ’writes: 


tSA- S^jj 

> 

3 S^jj fj3 Jt? 


J jA JJU 


BUDAKl. THE EATHEE OF HEO-FEESIAH FOETEY 


463 


0^y ,S_y» Jj^' lj\sS JO-.1 jru 

oljj J-Vil l_f i_j« ^JU j C/,j^ 

\ : The fragrance of the rivulet J^uliycin i is ever "wafted. (to us) 

The memory of kind friends is ever present in mind; 

The sandy desert of ^mu with all its hardships would glir^R TiTra gilTr 
under the feet; 

The water of the Oeus with all its expanse, would only he knee-deep 
for our steeds. 

Kejoice and long live 0 Bukhara 1 the King is coming to visit thee; 

The prince is the moon and Bukhara the sky, the moon would rise in 
the sky; 

The prince is the cypress and Bukhara the garden. 

The cypress would proceed to the garden; 

Eulogy and encomium would be an asset to thee 
Though the treasury might incur a liability. 

The king was so moved that he, as the story goes,2 without putting on his 
socks, got upon the horse that stood saddled at the gate and did not halt tiU 
he had travelled for eight miles. The courtiers presented to the poet a purse 
oftten thousand dinars. 


Dawlatshah has found no beauty in the song and has expressed surprise 
that words so simple could produce such a wonderful effect.^ We, however, 
must not forget that in Dawlatshah’s time artificial and stilted types of poems 
were in vogue and simplicity did not count for much. Apart from the simpli- 
city of the verses cited above, their wonderful effect upon the king undoubtedly 
owed much to the melodious voice and musical skill of the poet. 

Budakl’s poems on wine display his masterly touch in the lyric vein. 
Of the poems of this genre we quote below * the following which is best known, 
with its English rendering by Professor Edward Byles Cowell, the teacher of 
Fitzgerald as well as of Professor E. G. Browne: 


!j 

^ j ^ b’ It 3^ 3^ 


utjl)’ O jsl jljj ^ 3 

Xjl» 

mijW » ya \j J qJ* 

<3 y- i()a ^ (5*^ tj 

»jISp (J Cri 


1 A river in Bukhora. „ -r. t inn.i 

2 Nizami ‘Aruzl, Chahar MaqSla (ed. Mu^iwnmad QazvinI), pp. 37-39, Berlin, 1927. 

s Dawlatshah, ‘ TadKkiratu'ah-Shii'ara (ed. E. G. Browne), Perrian Histonoal Text, p. 32, 

London-Leyden, 1901. 

* Elza Quli Kli5n Hidayat, Majtm'u'l-Fu^S, i, 238, Tehran, A.H. 129o. 


454 


B. O. LAW VOLUME 


‘Bring me yon wine which thou might’st call a melted ruby in its cup, 

Or like a scimitar unsheathed, in the sun’s noon-tide light held up. 

’Tis the rose-water, thou might’st say, yea, thence distilled for purity; 

Its sweetness falls as sleep’s own balm steals o’er the vigil-wearied eye. 
Thou mightest call the cup the doud, the wine the raindrop from it^' 
oast. 

Or say the joy that fiUs the heart whose prayer long looked-for 
comes at last. 

Were there no wine all hearts would be a desert waste, forlorn and 
black; 

But were our last life breath extinct, the sight of wine would bring 
it back. 

0 if an eagle would but swoop, and bear the wine up to sky, 

Far out of reach of aU the base, who would not shout 
“ Well done ” as I ? ’ ^ 


Budaki had something of the Epicurean philosophy which inspired the 
poems of ‘Omar Khayyam in a later age. The poet sings ^ : 

all j j:j- cunJ ^ ^ ■■««> L [Sj i 


^ il j ^ j j*" 

® ib lab urri 


At (jUalwut 6JL_«T 3 

j 


Live merrily with gay black-eyed ones, for evanescent and unreal is 
the world; 

One should not be glad for gains obtained, nor should he be sad for the 
loss sustained; 

I have got for myself one who has tresses curly and fragrant and is 
bom of Twuri with face like the moon; 

Luc!^ is the man who gave and ate, wretched is he who n»ith e r ate 
nor gave, 

Alas I this world is vain and ephemeral, bring me wine and let happen 
what may. 

Indeed, Epicurean philosophy was the guiding principle of the life of 
the poet who wasted his health and fortune by treading the primrose-path of 


1 Browne, Literary History of Persia, i, 467-68; Cambridge, 1929. 

® Of. Sa'di’s line from the Oulistan: 

cwt* j %s^ A j j 

^ 

Fortunate was the man who ate and sowed and unfortuneto WftS he who died and loft 
behind. 



455 


BDDAKi, THE FATHER OP NEO-PERSIAN POETRY 


daUiance. However, with the approach of old age, the light-heartedness of 
youth was gone especially after the death of his friend and admirer Shahid 
of Balkh on whose death Rudald wrote an elegy.i He also lost his position 
in the Samamd court probably after his patron Nasr H bin Ahmad (A.H. 

4 301-331/A.D. 913-942) had to abdicate the throne in favour of his son NOh 
in consequence of a conspiracy against him for his conversion to the Isma'ili 
faith® for which the poet also appears to have had sympathy.® 

Hudahl was not without a vein of humour. It is said that once Abu 
Tahir Khusravani, a contemporary poet, had indirectly taunted Eudald for 
his vanity in dyeing his hair. He wondered why men dyed their lia-j T as 
by doing that they could not escape death and gave themselves trouble in 
vain.4 Eudaki took the compliment for himself and replied thus: 


^ J J 


-a* ^y, 









I dye not my hair black to become yoimg again and try sins anew. 

As in time of grief people don their garments black I dye my hair 
black to mourn the misfortune of old age. 


In the following verses, while mourning the death of a grandee, Eudaki 
says that a man should not lose his heart in times of distress and adversity. 
According to him it is through passive courage, resolute endurance and firm- 
ness of mind that a man can show his real greatness ® : 

oV J J ^ 

^ Jjj j^T aji a»T a»T j iii_> ^’1 «iij 


^ The elegy referred to is: 

lA-*!' if J jf J »Ai 3' •‘rf* 

Jv! jJ f Cf ‘-C 

2 Vide Siyatat-iiSma by Nisamu’l-Mulk, ed. Charles Schefer, 188-93. Paris, 1891. 

8 Of. Sls'rufi’s verse of which the second hemistich by Budaki has been adopted by way of 
Pa yrnTn ; 

yr jJ^ 0^1 ^ 

. Iflo K=i. p. 64, T.*. 1886; ri.. J. Plok^ M 

The lea Stager, gtSathm,’. H>. 821-22 in «» tfmmelSam,. VoL XV. tomton, 1890. 

5 Cf. the following linos of Kisa’i on the same subject: 

V . I .Chef. A, > / o- J 

jf* J jy o-i <sjy 

/» ail! J Ajv *‘->3 

Tf tbo„ art nained to see my hair tincture and dyeing my hair black; take it not amiss; 

W I npi«nl.«>a «»* ■«»»” "“S' 

wisdom of age and find it not. 



466 


B. 0. LAW VOLintfE 


S’ if 

4^jb ^ j^ S f* t^jb <>^ S f (>*^ 

j iS^jfjx j ^ ->•*'*' 

0 thou, who moumest and moumest rightly 
Anfl in secret sheddest tears, 

What is gone is gone and hath happened what had to happen, 

The past is past, why moumest thou in vain; 

Wishest thou to make the world eternal ? 

How could the world everlasting be ? 

Thou may’st wail on till the Day of Besmrection, 

How couldst thou by wailings bring back the departed one; 

Lament not, for the world pays no heed to lamentation, 

Bewail not as for wailings it careth not; 

’Tis in times of tribulation that ones 

Excellence, manliness and leadership become manifest. 

The following quatrain shows that the poet had nothing but a scathing 
condemnation for cant and hypocrisy i : 

Turning the face towards the altar would be of no avail 

If the mind is fixed on Bukhara and the damsels of Taraz; 

Our Lord might grant thee carnal desire 
But would hear thy prayers not, 

Kudald echoed through the following lines the eternal reh’gious sentiment 
of the East and advocated the noble principle of Ahimsa, arguing that all 
that Glod has given to man is not to be used either for his moral degradation 
or as a weapon for killing his fellow-men. One may wish that the wisdom of 
his lines stayed the cruel hand of the assassin and stopped for ever the terrible 
action of the nations or States employing the brutal engines of war for the 
destruction of human lives, abusing Science for perfidy and atrocious crimes. 
Here the poet speaks of the inevitable course of operation of the law of retribu- 
tion which man fails to see due to the haughtiness of his spirit and lack of 
wisdom and foresight. Here he comes out in his prophetic strain to convey a 
tmth for all times to come 

> 

> ' ' 

3 ^ ^ 3I A) jjSl ob^^ jr, 3^ Cf) 

1 Dr. Bisa-zada Shafaq, Ta'Hhh-i Adahiyyat-i Iran, p. 47, Tehran, A.H. 1321 (solar). 

® Awft, LulSb., ii, 9 . 



467 


RDDAKi, THE FATHER OF HEO-PERSIAN POETRY 

Ij: Ij jl \r jlj J^jti caT \; ^ \- ;<^ 

^ cu-i» jO. \r dn^jT jO, 4 s£j 

Thou may^st possess a knife but men thou mustn’t slay, 

God never forgetteth a crime perpetrated, 

The knife wasn’t meant for the l^ant. 

Nor the grape for making wine. 

Once Jesus foimd a slain man lying on the road 
And was struck with astonishment and grief. 

He said, ‘Whom hadst thou slain that thou 

Hast been slain and who hath slain thee himBRlf to be aln-in ? ’ 

Hurt thou none with thy finger, lest none may hurt thee with the fist.i 

Hudaki’s verses embodying his lament in his old age have special interest 
as they throw much light upon his life and habits. There are some lines 
which may offend modem taste, yet on account of the importance of the poem, 
we quote as many verses as could be available. From the perusal of these 
verses it is understood that he had fallen on evil days in his old age. The 
cause of his poverty and misfortime must be either due to his love for animal 
gratification ® or his removal from the Samanid court for his possible leanings 
towards the Isma'ili faith. Whatever the cause may be, the story described 
in these verses excites our pity, sorrow and grief. The verses are: 

Jj# 

m 

^y j j ^y jc** 

iy ji jL 0 jiaS j Aj) ^ *jU*» 

1 Ka^’llah b. Muhaminad b. ‘Abdu’I-Homld Munshl, Kilah-i Kalxla va Dimna, ed. Mlrza 
‘Abdu’l- ‘Ajjini RTinn GaiakSnl, Introduction, p. *J’, Tehran, 1361 AJBC. 

® We find references in his poems and in the poems TFiitten by later poets as to his love for a 
Turkish dave named ‘Ayyar. Rudaki had to spend a huge sum of money to purchase him and 
became involved in debt which was liquidated by his great ftiend and admirer Abu’l-Fa?! 
Bfd'ami. 

Cf. Budakl’s line: 

\j, j\^ jOi’* j«Ai al if jj*' f'V, 

Adib-i ?abir of Tirmiz writes: 

xS^ jU 0-15^ S»JJ ^ (t-' ■> j't. y ^ 

SuzanI of Samarqand says: 

•sAie I •=:: rf' 


458 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


jiji j6j-> ^ j ^y. 
i ji jiij: (^- ^y 

d— 1 -T ‘'^ 

ij, jb/ i/ u^;T ij. \r -iV 

i ji iji i^W. •^\ ^ 

5j» Obji Cl— s«i j\ J 

:,y y L-X d\^ J^>. 

i j| ^ «i^>. J* 

ij, f*^- ^ o\}\^ alJCs- L— I 

5 J| jlbj ^ d— ^ ^ J 

<lJ\p kSjJ '**» 

aji ^V»\** 4^ u*c» «*xiij JU“ ^ 






m 

^y f> J 

jl ^ 

Ajbj oT Ai 

^J1 

(^LadJ 

r 

^J*. 

Ojy^ j) JsLij 






jO. ^ j/" t/* 



^y 

d'^jF7 

v-j) j 

^ 1 

j A^T 







a j> Lj^a jl*«j ^ 

4»Uj Ail 

=>y 

j\>S 

jLj 


^ ^l»j l)^ 







jA» d-Ala 

^ j^j bj 

^y 

c)Vi 

4j jl 

uVt 

ojlj «--*£; 







Ci^jXi a£> d— jb-*» 

^‘j=r jjj. 

=^y 

jl^’j 



j\ ^\j^ c^ 







^-jja) i5jj j cJ jti* 

j O^JJ 

^y 

obj' 

®jU^ 


X Ci\f \X 





NBO-PEESIAIT POETRY 


459 


SUDAKi, THE FATHER OF 







AXV^ 


q1 jS Ij 

J JsUj 

h 






^ Vi 

ml 

^y 



jlj) 





^y y^y^ 

c^J 

-Ui;^ 

^y 


iSj t 






C^J 

iSj 



^y 







At ^ 

b* J jj 

JL^ 

^y 

J 1 







A 

->^r; J 


^y 

j\; ^ ^ 

Jt^. 






4^ 

AIUj tJ 

iV >xt> 

^y 


j\ ^ AlUj 


* 




<y^y ^ J 

c/j 

j J J"jy \f 

^y 

(jIaVm j 1 J 1 

•=*** J S->y. 

bj 





jljft 


jru 

iU 

^y 

OK'U jjf ^ 

; «-C djj} 





fj* J ctwS^ 


A;Uj Oj^ 



ijj 0^1 

J LiuSP oAj 

£ 

jL_>j L^P 



Wore out and feil all the teeth I had, 

They were teeth, nay they were bright lamps; 

They were as white as pure silver and resembled a row of pearls, 

- They were as bright as the Morning Star and as clear as the drops 
of rain; 

Not one is left now, all have decayed and fallen, 

. What a mishap I 'twas indeed the effect of Saturn; 

No ’twas not due to Saturn nor due to lapse of time 
Why then ? the truth is that ’twas the Will of Gk)d; 

Ever so hath turned the Wheel of Fortune, and till the world exists its 
law would reign supreme ; 



460 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


A that cures, a source of pain would be, and again a thing that 
pains a cure could be; 

Anon it makes old the things fresh and new 

And forthwith makes them new when old they grew; 

Many a beauteous garden is reduced to desert drear 

And where once stood a desert lovely gardens appear; 

0 thou, whose face is bright as the Moon and whose tresses fragrant 
as musk, knowest not what a high station thy slave held before; 

Past are the days when he was merry and gay 
And had more to enjoy and less to pay; 

Thou art displaying thy curling tresses to thy 'slave in glee 
And didst know him not when wavy curls had he; 

Gone is the time when his face was like velvet 

Gone is the time when his hair was ebon black; 

Many a maiden fair in love with him 
In secret visited him by night; 

As in the day she could visit him not for fear of her lord and loss of 
liberty ; 

Sparkling wine, ravishing eyes and comely face. 

Costly though they were cheap for me; 

Always happy I was and knew not what sorrow was. 

My heart was a play-ground for sport and gaiety 

Many a heart was softened to silk by my song 

Though ’twas as hard as a stone or an anvil could be ; 

Ever ready were his hands for the tresses smelling sweet 
And to lend the ear to men of lore always keen was he; 

Thou didst see him not, when he would enter gardens warbling like a 
nightingale; 

No hearth, no wife, no child, no care had he 
Eree from these and unencumbered was he ; 

Always bought he at enormous prices damsels having breasts like the 
pomegranates wher’ver in the town one could be; 

Gone are the days when the world ran crazy for his poems 
Gone are the days when the bard of Khurasan was he ; 

Who was laurelled and who was fevoured by all ? 

Who was showered by the House of SamSn with honour and 
favours; 

Forty thousand dirhams the prince of Khurasan rewarded him 
To which a fifth was added by Mir Makan; 

Now the time hath changed and changed am I, 

Get a beggar’s stick, for ’tis the time to have a stick and a wallet. 

Thus in sorrow and misfortune ended the days of the poet. He was indeed 
the spoilt child of fortune. He died in his own village in A.H. 329/A.D. 940. 
According to Sam'ani his tomb was situated in a .garden near his village 
Banuj, and was obliterated in course of time. 



INDUS SORtPT AND TANTBIO OODB 


461 


C/Uj ja U c-jT obj 3 I Jbu 

j» L-jjU |»:i _y. ji 

% ; Look not on earth for our graves after wo die. 

In the hearts of men of lore our sepulchres lie. 


INDUS SCRIPT AND TANTRIC CODE 
By 

Dn. B. M. Babua 

The Indus seals and script have been critically studied from different 
points of view by such eminent scholars as Sir John Marshall,! Mr. Earnest 
Mackay.s Professor Langdon.a Dr. G. R. Hunter, < Dr. Giuseppe PiccoH,6 
and ]\Icssra. C. J. Gadd® and Sidney Smith.^ It is necessary to keep in view 
the nature of the guidance to the study of this fascinating but difficult subject 
which each of them has given us. 

In the opinion of Sir John Marshall the Indus script is a pictographic 
writing which does not appear to liavo reached the syllabic stage, while in 
Dr. Hunter’s opinion it may have boon originally both pictographic and ideo- 
gr.aphic, but in its preserved state it is mainly phonetic, hir. Gadd in his 
study of the Sign-list of Early Indus Script opines, ‘that it is not an alphabet 
must be obvious from the number of its signs; such a notion cannot seriously 
bo taken into account. On the other extreme, it can hardly be a pure picture- 
writing in which every sign represents a word, since a very short search will 
reveal groups of signs which frequently appear in the inscriptions in different 
contexts and often Avith the insertion of one or more varying signs. While 
no great certainty can bo felt about this matter, it remains true that the 
general impression derived from the study of these inscriptions is that the signs 
are probably sj'llabic, with the admixture of ‘ideograms’, and perhaps deter- 
minatives; in short, that the system is porhaijs not very much different from 
that of the cimoiform Avriting.’ 

Mr. Sidney Smith observes, ‘Of those writings which are not purely 
alphabetic it may bo said that signs fall into one of three classes, syllables, 
ideograms, determinatives. In any one inscription a sign can only belong 
to one of these classes, but it may in different inscriptions belong to all three. 
If a sign is used with a syllabic value, it may in different inscriptions have 


1 Articlo on BcUgion in Mohenjo-daro and Indus Civilization, Arthur Probsthain, Vol. I. 
s Articlo on Scab and Seal Impressions in ibid,, Vol. H. 

® Articlo on The Indus Script in ibid,, Vol. U. 

* Work on The Script oj Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, 

® Articlo on A comparison between Signs of the Indus Script and Signs in the Corpus In- 
seriptionum Etrusearum, Indian Antiquary, Vol. LXH, Pt. 782. 

’ Articlos on tho Sign-list of Early Indus Script, Mohenjo-daro, Vol. n. 



4G2 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


different syllabic values. If a sign belongs to the last class, it may determine 
meaning, in which case it generally marks tho first or last sound in a syllable, 
or the first or last syllable in a polysyllabic. A determinative of sound is 
usually called a complement, and is particularly useful when ideograms permit 
of variant readings .... Tho complications of tho ‘matoriar nature of thol^ 
signs arise from two main features of tho script, modifications, whether internal 
or external, and combinations.* 

While definitely stating that tho Brahmi script is derived from tho ancient 
Indus pictographic writing and assigning the phonetic values to the derived 
alphabetic characters. Professor Langdon does not wish ‘to convey tho 
inference that these are the correct values of tho original ideograms, any more 
than the phonetic values of tho Phoenician alphabet represent the values of 
the Egyptian pictographs from which they are derived.’ ‘It is highly impro- 
bable’, says he, ‘that the signs of tho Indus script have reached tho syllabic 
stage, that is, a consonant and vowel, as in tho Brahmi alphabet. Many of 
them may possibly be so used, and used as phonetic elements in the writing 
of tho words, as many Sumerian pictographs are in the oldest Icnown Sumerian 
texts.’ He goes further and adds that there is not oven a remote connection 
of the signs of the Indus script with the Sumerian or Proto-Elamite ones, 
the Indus inscriptions resembling the Egyptian hieroglyphs far more than they 
do the Sumerian linear and cuneiform system. There exists no difference of 
opinion as to tho great antiquity of the Indus pictographs and tho system of 
the Indus writing from right to left. As regards tho contents of the Indus 
inscriptions, they are so far taken to be personal names or titles. 

In spite of aU attempts hitherto made there prevails a ‘counsel of despair’ 
regarding the decipherment of the Indus inscriptions. Swami Sankarananda, 
in his l^gvedic Culture of the Pre-historic Indus, calls our attention to the 
Tantric code, Varnabljakosa,^ strongly maintaining that a smre key to im- 
locking the secrets of the Indus script, if rightly used, might be obtained from 
it. The object of this paper is to briefly indicate the way in which the guidance 
from the Tantric code might be followed and that with what probable results, 
without being sanguine at all of being able to lessening the difficulties that 
beset the path or having a final say in the matter. 

A few preliminary observations are indispensable. The Tantra texts, 
as they are now extant, are admittedly compilations of a comparatively 
modern age. They are far removed as such even from the Vedic and Epic 
times, not to speak of the early Indus civilization. Evidently their subject- 
matters bear the stamp of things that evolved through many subsequent 
periods. The separation of things that are later from things that arc earlier 
is necessary before the Tantric code is availed of for the present pui^ose. 
One thing, however, is certain, namely, that it is chiefly based upon the picto- 
graphs which stand for a syllabic form of writing. In other words, it attaches 
certain phonetic values, in many instances more than one, to different signs 

m TantrSbMdhana, edited by Fanchanana Bhattacharya in Arthur Avalon Tantrik 

Texts Series, Vol. I, 



Indus script and tantric code 


463 


as well as abstract ideas. So far as the signs go. their variety and variations 
are at first sight coimnonsurato with those of the Indus script. The Sansloit 
names which it supplies scorn to bo very appropriate to the Indus signs if we 
can ascorbiin tlio deities and men in different attitudes, animals and objects 
^ ffora which they are derived. And yet the question is bound to remain open 
in the present stale of our knowledge if the phonetic values as svggested in 
the Tantric code are nt all applicable to the pictographs of the Indus Valley. 
TJio utmost that I can saj’ is that there is no harm in giving it a fair trial, 
in which case there must bo a concerted action among a number of experts 
who can correctly identify the Indus signs and those who can lay their finger 
on their Sanskrit nntno-cqtiivalcnt.s in the Tantric code. If thereby a large 
number of intelligible words can bo made out of the Indus inscriptions, then, 
and then only, the iiroblem of decipherment can bo taken to bo solved, at least 
partially, in the absence of any better guide in the shape of bilingual, trilingual 
or quadrilingual records or in that of Tantric manuscripts with the pictographs 
distinctly shown in them. 

That there ivns the tradition of a pictogram in India is evident from the 
Laliia-Vistara list of sixty-four kinds of writing {lipis), including the numerical 
and notational ones and mentioning the BrShmi, Kharosthi and Puskarasari 
ns three parent scripts, the last one being obviouslj’’ the name of a pictogram. 

Though there is a wide gulph which separates the Indus history from the 
ago of the Buddha and which can be bridged over only after other ancient 
sites showing the chain of continuity are discovered, it is a fact that the ancient 
pictographic tradition is maintained in the symbolical inscriptions on the 
Indian pimch-markcd coins, while the terra-cottas of the same age maintain 
the technique and tradition of the popular Indus arts and crafts. 

As compared with the pictographs and signs of the Indus script, the 
Egyptian hieroglyphics follow a simplified and much more definite system. The 
same obscn’ation applies almost with equal force to the linear and cuneiform 
65’'stem of Sumcrin, Susa, Babj’lon, AssjTia and Iran. The uniqueness and 
high antiquity of the Indus script arc proved by the much wider variety of 
its signs as well ns its fluid character, both of these distinctive features being 
envisaged by the Tantric code. 

One great drawback of the Tantric code, so far as it is known, lies in its 
failuro to suggest the pictures or signs that are expressive of numerals, whereas 
in all probabilitj’ and as argued by l^Ir. Sidney Smith there are a few numeral 
signs in the Indus inscriptions. If this bo a fact, one may further observe 
that the Indus devices were precursors of those of the cuneiform system 
(see PI. V, C). 

The Indus tradition of the 5 *ogic method of mental concentration was 
continued through the Upcinfsads, Buddhism, Samlchya-iogo and different 
forms of later Tantricism, while, ns I make out, the evidence of one of the 
early Mohonjo-daro seals is conclusive as to the continuity of the Indus religious 
thought through the i(jtgvcda, Upanisade, Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, 
in short, through the whole of Indo-Aryanism. In this particular seal an 



464 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


Aivattha tree (Ficus Beligiosa) prominently figures, even with its aerial 
roots. Two bird-beaked and dragon-bodied but conventionalized creatures 
remaiu poised in the air fi:om two sides of the tree, facing each other. Their 
tails are entwined on the tree-trunk round a circular spot in which the four 
pippalas (Ahattha fruits) are shown, hanging down fi^om their stalks (PI. II, !).']? 
It is not difficult to make out that the creatures represented thereon are the 
two Suparnas, the mythical birds who appear in the Pali Jatdka NidanahatJia 
to be in the r61e of demi-gods along with the Nagas, both ranking below the 
Devas and Brahmas.^ The Buddha accords a chance or supernatural 
(opapatiJca) origm to both of them.* In the Indus stage the Naga-bodied 
Suparnas are a single mythical being, while their later separation into two 
classes of mythical beings closely resembling each other in their general shapes 
and forms is evident from their representation as such in the decorative device 
of the stone libation vases from Babylonia and Assyria (eee PI. II, la). So 
far as the Indus seal is concerned, the representation of the AivaUha finiits 
would have been unmeaning if it were not for the fact that Indus artist’s 
intention was to indicate the eating or not eating of them by the two creatures. 
If so, the seal concerned contains unmistakably a very ancient and interesting 
pictorial representation of the allegorical verse in the Bgveda * and later texts * 
which embodies the whole trend of the Indo-Aryan religious thought : 

Dva supar^ sayujd sahhdya samdnam vfh^wm, pan§a§vajdte / 

tayor cmyal}, pippalam svdduUyanainan anyo abhicdkaiiti // 

'Two birds, inseparable friends, cling to the same tree. One of them eats 
the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating.’ 

As to the contents of the Indus inscriptions, Mr. Gadd hits the mark in his 
conjecture that ‘they include names, very probably of the owners’. ‘Many, 
perhaps’, he adds, ‘especially of the shorter inscriptions, may be regarded as 
names alone, but others seem to add qualifications, which may be titles ’.^ 
Mr. Sidney Smith gives us a better guidance when he takes for granted ‘that 
the inscriptions do not all contain only personal names; there must be other 
elements as well’.® We can have a more definite guidance from the Pali 
scholiast Buddhaghosa when he leads us to expect to find on the punch- 
marked coins (kdhdpanas) either the name of the place — a village, town or 
city, a lull-side or river-bank — from which they were issued or that of their 
maker.’' 

In the inscriptions on the Indus seals, too, as they stand till now, we are 
generally to expect the names, simple or descriptive, or persons or places, 

1 EausbSU’s Jataka, i, pp, 70, 76. 
a Samyutta, m, pp. 246ff. 

® ^gveda, I, 16A-20; Niruhta, XIV, 30. 

4 Katha Upa., HI; Muv^aka, III, l.l; S’vetSwatara, IV. 6. 

« Mohenjo-daro, Vol. H, p. 412. 

» Ibid., Vol. n, p. 421. 

Saratthappakasini, H, p. 294; mahd-heraUfiiko . . . asukagame asukanigame asuka-nagart 
aattka-pabbatacchayaya amka-nadUire kato Hi pi asukacariyena kato Hi pi janSti. 



INDUS SOEDPT AND TANTEIC CODE 


465 


the persons being owners or manufacturers and the places, villages, towns, 
cities or the like. It is only in the few cases of the seals with reli^ous or 
mythological devices, which were probably used as amulets or the like, that 
we are to expect the names of the deities represented on them or any formulas 
<Jof mystic potency. Mowing the guidance of the Tantric code, one may 
feel justified in thmking that the ordinary inscriptions erxlirig in the letter 
(= ^a) record the personal names in genitive singular, meaning ‘of So and 
So’. One of them (PI. V, B. 2) may be taken to read L+u+l+u+^ = 
Lulu&i, ‘of Lulu’. Another of them (PI. V, B. 9-10), in which in the upper 
line a glmriyal (Sk. graha) holds a fish in its jaws, may be taken to record a 
place-name ending in the word patha. There is a different place-name ending 
in the same word patJia in the inscription on a second seal (PI. V, B. 9).i 
In the religious seal (PI. I, 1), the inscription may be supposed to record the 
name of the deity represented on it. It will be extremely hazardous at present 
to suggest anything beyond this. 

hlr. Sohrab Jamshedjee Bulsara, who passes as a well-informed Iranian 
scholar, is out to prove the Iranian (i.e, Zoroastrian) origin of such ancient 
Indian alphabets as ‘the Devanagarl, the Indus Script, the Brahml, the Pali 
and the Kharoshti ’.2 The typical list given of the ancient Indian alphabets 
is more than sufficient to prove his supemormality. It is for the first time 
that we hear of the ‘Avestan letters’ modelled evidently on the Egyptian 
hierogljrphics which follow a simple system of picture-writing as compared 
with the Indus script.^ 

One thing may be definitely stated in favour of the Indus scribes that they 
have most skilfully and intelligently executed their work and are not careless 
like the scribes of A^oka. In a few of the seals they have clearly indicated 
the animal and other figures &om which the letters or signs were derived. 
Attention may be drawn first of all to the seal (PI. I, 1) in which the scribe 
indicates that the first ‘letter on the right gives the outline of the lion-feced 
man in a standing postiu’e, the second stands for the horned head of the buffalo, 
the third for the head of the rhinoceros, the fourth for the two forelegs of the 
tiger, the fifth for the outline of the fish, and the sixth for the two forelegs of 
the elephant. By showing the first letter below the inscription and above the 
tiger, the scribe wants to indicate that the inscription is to be read from right 


1 Note that in historical times the Punjab proper abounded with the places named after 
roads, e.g. Ajapatha (Goat-road), Me^^apatha (Barn-road), Musikapatha (Bat-road), Vamsa- 
patha (Bamboo-road). Mahaniddesa, pp. 165, 415; Panini, V. 1. 77; B. C. Law, India as described 
in Early Texts of Bvddhistn and Jainism, p. 71. In each of the two seals (PI. V, B. 9, 9o), the 
place-name seems to consist of five signs or syllables, the three in the lower row to be read from 
loft to right and the two in the upper row from right to left. The three animals in the lower 
row of the first seal appear to bo an elephant, a rhinoceros and a ram, the ram in front being 
shown also with its head turned towards the signs in the upper row. The place-name to bo 
made out, according to the Tantric code, is ^nlohapotha=Sk. Sarabhapatha. 

® Proceedings and Transactions of the Tenth All India Oriental Conference, pp. 102ff. 

3 Ibid., p. 108. 

30 



466 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


to left. The names suggested in the TaUttio code along with their phonetic 
values are as follows (PI. I, la). 

1. SimhSsya (Lion-faced) = a; Narasimha (Man-lion) = a or «. 

2. Mahisaghna (Buffalo-kiUer) ja. 

3. Khadgi (Rhinoceros) = gha, la, va. 

4. Vyaghrapada (Tiger-legs) = uov^. 

6. Matsya (Pish) = pa. 

6. Hast! (Elephant) = ^a. 

The sensible word which can be made out of the inscription is ajala- 
upaia, Sk. acala-upa^ya, meaning ‘The mountain-worshipped one’. 

In another seal (PI. II, 6) we see a six-faced animal and behind it a six- 
faced letter. The Tantric code name for this is ^anmukha (Six-faced) having 
u, u, tha, or pa for its phonetic value. 

In a third seal (PI. II, 6) the scribe indicates the correspondence between 
a three-faced quadruped and a letter derived from it. The appropriate name 
to be supplied for this letter from the Tantric code is Trivaktra (Three-faced), 
phonetic value u. 

In a fourth seal (PI. II, 4, 4a) the first letter V of the inscription stands 

for the forelegs of the leopard. The suitable Tantric code name for this will 
be Svapada (Dog-legs), phonetic value d. 

In a fifth seal (PI. II, 3, 3a) the third letter ^ stands for the long* 

bearded head of a mighty goat. If the Tantric code name Aja (Goat) or 
Aje4a (Goat-chief) be applicable to it, its phonetic value is either ai, sa or ja, 
jha. 

Similarly the letter or sign composed of six vertical strokes, Tantric code 
name Sadata (Six travellers), phonetic value sa, may be shown to have been 
derived from the six standing human figures (PI. II, 2, 2a) ; the letter or sign 
composed of Seven vertical strokes, Tantric code name Sapta-turaga (Seven 
fast-walkers), phonetic value cha, from the seven human figures in a fast 
walking attitude (PI. I, 2, 2a); the letter or sign from the figure of a 
tree-spirit appearing in the attitude of catching or lalliTig a tiger (PI. I, 3, 3a); 

and the letter or sign ^ from the standing figure of a deity under a 
prahha-IHk^ object (PI. I, 4, 4a). 

It is not an easy task to identify all the letters Or Rign & • a few of them can 
certainly be. Take, for instance, Elabandha (Headless man), phonetic value 
va (PI. IV, 149); Vricika (Scorpion), phonetic value dm,' (Pi. IV, 94); Vihaga 
(Plying bird), phonetic value plui (PI. IV, 99); &khi (Peacock), phonetic value 
ta, pha, ra, U (PI. IV, 104); Kukkuti (Hen), phonetic value * (PI. IV, 103); 
Hasta (Hand), phonetic value ^7ia (PI. Ill, 32) ; Dhanu (Bow), phonetic value 
ta (PI. IV, 161); Dhanurdhara (Bow-holder), phonetic value jpa (PI. IV, 152); 
Mukha (Mouth), phonetic value ah, lea, ta, dha, ya, va, Icsa (PI. Ill, 31); Gaja 

30B 



INDUS SOKIPT AND TANTEIO CODE 


467 


(Elophnnt tuskor), phonetic value o (PI. Ill, 87); Catustara (Four stars), 
plionetic value n (PL III, 3); Ti-ibindu (Three points), phonetic value cJut 
(PL III, 2); Bindu (single point), phonetic value am, i, tJia, ma (PL III, 1); 
Panoapaiicatmika (Five individuals), phonetic value gha (PL III, 18, 18a). 

The diflSculty which seems at first sight insuperable lies in fin H mg out 
the underlying sj^stem of the Indus writing, in separating the vowel and 
consonantal signs, as well as in distinguish mg the numeral devices. 

In offering this suggestion I do not intend being dogmatic on any point. 
I claim certainty just in ono point, namely, in the interpretation of the seal 
representing the two Suparnas on an AivaWia tree. But it may be hoped that 
his paper as a whole will bo found useful in olearing up the general position 
of tho Indus script which is indigenous, ancient in time and unique in its 
character. Tho development of a syllabic system in the Indus script retaining 
in it vestiges of pictographs and ideograms ‘is undeniable, and there is ap- 
parently no solid ground for thinking that there is anything peculiarly Dravi- 
dian or prolo-Dravidian in tho Indus seals and their inscriptions. None need 
bo astonished if thou* language is a form of Prakrit from which the language of 
tho Jjtgveda itself evolved with no real dual in it save and except in the com- 
pounds denoting natm-al i)airs. 









INDUS SCHIPT— TYPICAL SIGNS 


Plate III 


l , , *7 ' 3 . * * i f * 5 ^' / i 

' • » » I / 

3c. / ' ^- = S'. 5 if. / 7. .<55' s. A 

Q I lo. I II- II IS '*■ " " 

m. II II 1^- I I 'S’. ;; it-ni 

li II 

'7- nil ' 8 - 1111 / 


19- //111) In 

III /III 

^5. ) )) ^*7- •))))) 2«. ^ .S9. -J 30.^ 

31. I sa-iXS 

H- n 37- § 


3g. 


39 


^0. E 


<’*- /?/|y V3./1/V Aid g ''^•A 

^ /wy ^ 

'/i. / ‘ll.a. A ^7- P h M f . 

<> 7 . 4 5 ^- ^ ^1 

V 

o' 

£4. H £9. rj 70. ^ 71. jiij 7i. Q 7J-g9 

74. 5 7r. ^ 7£. Q 77. (Jj£ 7*. |> 7^-M 

‘8»- D IF If 

««•• « ■ Rccf? ’ 7 . 8 «- £X ^ 3 - l>c 



INDUS SCRIPT— TYPICAL SIGNS 


Plate IV 


9o. 






fo3. 



US 



jsy. ^ 
130. aP 



Sh [suui umn/) 

99. 


9‘r. ^ 

9^. g : 

37.^ ^ 




">3. i 
¥ 


| 6 ^. ^ 

'"■ 1 , 


u 

II/. UjA' 

M 

113 . H4 

//b-. ^ 

-M. 

1/7. ^ 



i2oct . 

’*’• 2^ 

/2Z. ^ 

y 

125-. 

;2fe. ^ 

12 6a. ^ 

lie. IP 

129. ^ 


u,l. J 


'33. ^ 

m.Ji 
n D Q 

136.^ 

'”'^r ■ 

IS*. 1 

/ 3i. 

r 



/4r/;r- Ojp 

f 

/W. OJTV 

'‘'7-c4, 

lift- ClJ) ^ 

II 

'+9. ^ 

A 

f'SI. ^ 

iSz.^ 



1^6. ^ 



/^. 1" 

IaP' 

l^z. y 



/ . 

«7. .| 

"’ll. 

‘7t>. ^ 

'7/. 

/7.. ^ 


(7 

ns. i=p 

n?. A 


INDUS SCEIPT 


Plate V 


A. Typical CoMBrNATioirs 


M>C + 1>0 

i ' X 

A - 

. 0+ 

+ GD 


IXX. t>o + 1^ = ^ 


O 0 


A -7. :?!< -t A = ^ g. 0+r=<fi 

^ .», « + 0 -"a,'' 6 " 




. (O** + 


^ ,r. Bf * 

^ fS. OptV- ^ '’-f 


} 4 


V 


■h ** 


- i|. ^ 




B. Typical Inscriptioits 


V/^tPIX PC ^ VC^ ii 3. 

iPKltlK^ 1/2)4 ^ f/( jffxSHO 

^ ca 0. f 4 till 3. ^ ^IW Ojo 



, C. Numeral Sighs 

/. Y «• J £. ^ • 3 - "/C, S'*- 

% /■ ‘II, c. fYY ^' 1 ‘],^-IVy 



INDEX 


, . Abhidhannakofo, 308, 312 
A^^^hakasi, 73 
Adil Shall, Silcandar, 104 
Aia-i-Akhari, 179 
Aiyangar, S. K., 413 
Ajata^tru, 19 
Akbar, 103, 104, 109 
Albers, A. C., 424 
Ambapall, 73, 74 
Ambns^ha, 127 
Ambattbala, 136 
Amdanga-Saiupnagar Plains, 389 
AnStbapip^a, 74 
Andersen, Dines, 24 
Angulimala, 73, 172 
Apadana, 183 
Arabia, 112 
Arnold, Ednin, 117 
Arnold, Matthew, 320, 323 
ArthaSastra, 14, 16, 198 
Aioka, 19, 96, 466 
Aung, S. Z., 167 
Avadana Pataka, 21 
AvalokiteSrara, 16, 16, 17 
Ayodhyfi, 283 

Aj^angar, S. Krishnaswamy, 196 
Ayyar, Venkata Bama, 420 
Acfirya, Varada, 166 
Acharya, P. K., 276 
Soharyya, Govardhana, 269 
Amba^tha, 127, 136 
Anandaraja’s palace, 220 
Arya Vajra, 66 

Babur, 104, 106 
Baghaura, 216 
Bailey, H. W., 11 
Balamulnmda, 146 
Balkan States, 89 
BaliaiaII,331 
Bapabbatta, 179 
Banerji, S. K., 103 
Bapat, P. V., 260 
Barapasi, 283 

Barasat-Basirhat Plains, 392 
Barracli^ur, 384 
Bama, B. M., 461 
Bama, D. D., 183 

Baruipur-Jaynagar Plains, 346, 366 
BamipuT'Matln Bead, 370 
Beames, 197 
Bhadrabahu, 61, 62 
31 


Bhadrabahu U, 66 
Bhaduri, Sadananda, 38 
Bhagwat, N. K., 61 
Bhandarkar, B. G., 139 
Bhattachaiya, Padmanath, 260 . 
Bhattacbaiya, Vidhnsskhara, 48 
Bhavadevs, 267 
Bhoja, 191, 192. 

Bhojanagara, 136 
Bhojaraja’s palace, 224 
Bhiramar Geetd, 286 
Bhunahu, 63, 67 
Bijapur, 104 
Bimbisara, 19, 74 
Bloch, Jules, 22 
Bloomfield, 126 

Brahmachari, ITpendranaih, 111 
Brown, P., 104 
BfhannandikeSvara, 416 
Buddha, 176, 424 
Buddha>Gaya, 429 
Buddbachacit, 117 
Buddha^osa, 63, 464 
Buddhakbetta, 183 
Buddbapadana, 184, 186 
Buddhavaipsa, 183 
Budge'-Budge, 364 
Budge-Budge-Bishnupur Plains, 349- 
Biihler, 19, 20 
Burdwan Fever, 116 
Bums, 330 

CandS, 72 

Caryapadas, 201, 215 
Ceylon, IS 

Cbaitanya Mangal, 235 
Chakiabarty, Tapo Nath, 243 
Cbakravarti, Chintaharan, 176 
Cbakravarti, Manomohan, 197 
Cbap^hmura, 230 
Cbandras of Bohitagiri, 217 
Cfaarpentier, 18 
Chatterjee, S. P„ 342 
Chatterji, S. K., 203 
Chaudhmd, Jatindra Bimal, 146 
Chinese Turkestan, 319, 320 
eSnas, 131 
Cintamapi, 147 
Coimbatore, 273 
Cola-Sailendra, 420 
Conjeevaram, 836 
Curzon, IJbrd, 108 



470 


B. 0. LAW VOLTJMB 


D. B. Bhandarliar Volume, 266 

Damascus, 337 

Daradas, 131 

Das, Sarat Chandra, 311 

Dasa, Jagannatb, 205 

Devapala, 247 

Devaputra, 306 

Dey, N. L., 239 

Dhamma, 9, 68 

DharmaSastra, 15 

Dickens, 320 

Dipavainsa, 19, 20 

Dravi^s, 131 

Dutt, Cham Chandra, 76 

Dwarka, 230 

Egyptians, 88 
Elephants, 116 
Elliot, 176 
Enthoven, B. E., 2 
Epigraphia Zeylanica, 15 

Fergusson, 104 
Firdausi, 445 
Foucher, 310 

Cadadhar Faddhati, 200 
Galilee, 99 
Ganapati, 16 
Gangadhara, 179 
Gau^a-Lekhamala, 252 
Gaurl, 147 
Geiger, 27 
Ghana6yama, 148 
Ghatage, A. M., 118 
Girivraja, 283 
Gimar, 116 
Goetz, H., 433 
Golconda, 104 
Gondhalis, 7 
Gopichandrer-gana, 214 
Gbpinatfarao, T. A., 140 
Gotama, 61, 64 
Gurjara Eavi, 148 ■ 

Halisahar, 364 
Harappa, 232 
Hardy, Thomas, 320 
Harikaladeva, 216 
Harisena, ,241 
Harshaoharita, 246 
Hasnahad Plains, 400 
Havel, E. B.,'284 
Etavell, 104 
Hazra, B. C., 416 
Heimaim Betty, 408 
Herds, H,, 194 
31B 


Heydon, 116 
Hindi literature, 286 
Hooghly, 363 
Humayun, 104 
Hunter, 197 

Hydro-electric Development in South India, 
200 

Iconography, Hindu, 140 
Ichamati, 301, 402 
Indragupta, 248 
Inscription — 

Bhagalpur copper-plate, of NarayanapSla, 
246 

Edilpur copper-plate, of Kefiavasena, 259 
Gauhati copper-plate No. I, of Indrapala, 
250 

Kamauli copper-plate, of Vaidyadova, 247 
Ehalimpur copper-plate, of Dharmapula, 
260 

Er^nadvorika Temple, 240 
Naihati copper-plate, of Vallalasena, 260 
Nalanda copper-plate, of Devapala, 246 
Paharpur copper-plate, 262 
Ishaque, M., 444 
Ifivaragho^, 244 

Jacobi, 22 

Jahangir, 103, 104, 109 
Join, H. L., 61 
Jain, Eomta Prosad, 239 
J&schke, 264 
Jatakamala, 306 
Jayotilako, D. B., 7 
Jlio, Amoranatha, 320 
Jhoveri, Erishnolol M., 116 
Jn&nadas, 202 
Jogeshwari, 116 
Jwar-Vikar, 112 

Eabir, 290, 291 
Eadambaii, 179 
Eakdwip, 352 
ECala-azar, 111, 116 
Ealasoka, 19 
Ealavants, 7 
Eali Yuga, 77 
Ealidaso, 191, 194, 196, 197 
Ealpa Sutra, 61 
Eamarupaman^la, 261 
EamarupaSasanaball, 260 
Eombojas, 131 

Eamma, 68, 70, 168, 161, 162, 169 £E. 
Eampilya, 239, 240, 241, 283 
Eancanasaxa, 11, 12 
Eahclpura, 64 
Eane, P. V., 13 



INDEX 


471 


.Hsnheri, H6 
Ka^i^ka, 234, 307, 303 
Kanta, Surya, 127 
Katre, S. M., 22 
Kau^illya, 13 

, Kavikankan Can^, 202, 205 
Kavyamimuipsa, 192, 103 ■ 

Keats, 321, 323 
Keith, 281 
Kerr, John, 115 ' 

Khan, Fazal Ahmad, 334 
Khare, G. H., 140 
Kliardah, 384 
KhaSas, 131, 209 
Khusrau, 104 
Ki^^ip, 421 
Kit{ipurushas, 222 
Kinnaras, 222 
Kiratas, 131 
Kisa Gotaml, 72 
Konow, Sten, 307 
KosambI, 283 

Kosambi, Dharmanand, 117 
Kramrisch, Stella, 141 
Krishna, M. H., 330 
K^emendra, 193 
Kulapap^ta, 148 

Kulpi -Diamond Harbour-Falta Plains, 346 

Kundakundacarya, 57 

KuntaleSvarn dantya, 191 

Knnti, 251 

Kuriyan, G., 266 

Ku^na kings, 305 

KuSinara, 431 

Lakshmapasena, 259 
Lalitavistara, 263, 463 
Lalmai Banges, 213, 217, 218 
Land utilization in the District of 24- 
Parganas, Bengal, 342 
Langdon, 461, 462 
Laud, Archbishop, 1 
Law, B. C., 23, 266 
L6vi, Sylvain, 24, 307 
Lilatilaka, 337 
Lokanatha, 243, 245 
Luders, 22, 25, 33, 306, 311 
Lumbira, 424 

Macdonell, 281 
Madanade'\n, 240 
Madanapala, 255 
Madhav Rao, 435 
Madhava, 34 
Madhavacaiya, 199 
Madhura, 283 
Madras, 269 


Magandiya, 63 
Magrahat, 352 
Mahabharata, 282 
Mahavaxpsa, 21, 136 
Mabavastu, 263, 308 
-Mahavlra, 51, 242 
. Mahenjodaro, 232 
Mahipala I, 251, 254 
Mahmud, Sultan, 452 
Mainamati, 2l3, 215, 217, 218 
'Majumdar, B. C., 198 
Majumdar, Surendra Nath, 139 
Mallika, 67 

ManasSra, 275, 280, 283 
Mani&chandra, 214 
Manu, 132 

Manusmpti, 207, 208, 209 
Marshall, John, 312, 461 
Matsumoto, Tokiimyo, 22 
Mediterranean, 112 
Mesopotamia, 112 
Milinda, 166 
Mishra, Dme^a, 237 
MiSra, Kedara, 247 
Mithila, 283 

Mithradates H and HI, 305 
Mitra, Bajendra Lala, 197 
Mookerjee, Asutosh, 108 
Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, 231 
Moscow, 112 
Mpchchhakatika, 282 ■ 

MiUler, F. W. K., 11 . 

Nadia, 236 
NSgadfisaka, 19 
Nagasena, 166 
Naihati-Jagaddal, 384 
Nair, V. P. Eannan, 266 
Narada, Thera, 158 
Narasimhs, 331 
Narasingha Deva II, 204 
Narayapapala, 255 
Narendrasinha, 9 
Nasik, 236 
Nekkhamms, 260 
Newman, 320 
Nibbana, 69, 168 
Nilgiri hills, 270 
Nirgrantbas, 219 
Nirvana, 19, 54, 55 
Nitisara, 179 
Nityananda, 181 
Noapara, 384 
Nur Jahan, 107, 108 
Nyayakandall, 40 
Nyayakusumanjali, 43 
Nyayalilavati, 42 



472 


B. 0. LAW VOLUME 


ITyaya-Voifiesiko, 38 

Omar Khayyam, 464 ' 

Oriya literature, 197 

Fadmapani, 221 
Faborpur, 226 
Fablavas, 131 
Fanini, 135 
Fanipat, 437 
Faradas, 131, 209 
Farakramabohu, 16 
Faranavitaua, S., 15 
FaraSara, 264 
FaraSarasm^ti, 207 
Fasenadi, 67 
Fatacara, 72 
Fatanjali, 137 
Fathak, R. V., 117 
Fattikera, 216, 216 
Faun^as, 131 
Pegu, 9 

Felliot, 11, 316 
Fope Gregory VII, 84 
For5,na, 20 
Fortugal, 112 

Fragiyotiahapurabbukti, 261 
Frai&aparamita, 22 
Ftolemy, 139 
Furana— , 

Bhagavat, 286 
Matsya, 13 

NaudikeSvara, 416, 416, 419 

Baghavan, V., 191 
Babula Sthavira, ^ri, 16 
Bajadhaimakan^, 15 
Bajagaba, 136 
Bajasinba, Vijaya, 9, 10 
Bajatarangini, 178 
Bama, 290 
Bamacandra, 16 
Bamacbandran, T. N., 213 
Bamayana, 1 
Bavana, 1 

Beu, Bisheshwar Nath, 207 
Bhys Davids, 18, 283, 309 
Biga, 112 
Rogers, 115 
Bobitagiri, 217, 218 
Boy Choudht^, M. L., 292 
Budaki, 444, 460, 466, 467 
Bupban'-Kanya’s palace, 223, 224 
Bupban-mura, 226 
Bnpiwrayan, 346 
.Russia, 89 . ’• 



^abdarotnavall, 181 
Sagala, 283 
Saha, M. N., 84 
Sahajayana, 216 
Sahityadarpan, 200 
^akas, 131, 209 
Sukota, 283 

Salbanraja’s palace, 229 
Samantabbadra, 62, 63, 60 
Saiagha, 7 

Saranankara, 9, 10, 11 
Sarasvati, Bangaswamy, 196 
Sarvasvara, 413, 414 
Sarup, Lakshman, 34 
daSa^a, 227 

^Bstrl, Haraprasad, 200, 216, 417 
Satara, 2 

Sayanucarya, 34, 190 
Schopenhauer, 159 
Son, Dinosh Ch., 197, 199 
Son, Kcshav Ch., 116 
Sen, Friyaranjan, 197 
Sen, Sukumar, 269 
Sesa Concept of, 123 
Sliillong, 114 
Siddhartha, 226 
Sikandara, 103, 109 
SiSunagas, 21 
^ivabhuti, 61 
Skandasvamin, 34 
Smith, Helmor, 24 
Smith, Vincent, 104, 217 
Sona, 72 
Spain, 112 
Spooner, 307 
^ravasti, 283 
^rl Bhadra, 61 
§rl Krishna, 286 
^rlcbandra, 218, 249 
^rlpati Bhat^, 163 
Stede, W., 23 
Sterling, 197 
Subhadra, 251 

Subhasita-sara-samuccaya, 145, 163 
Sufis, 292 
Sujata, 117 

Sukul, Lalita Frasad, 286 
Sulaiman Shikoh, 106 
^ulapani, 417 

Sundarbans, 347, 360, 362, 361, 399, 403 
Suryya-siddhanta, 94 
Susunaga, 19 

Suvarnaprabhasottama-sutra, 309 

Tagore, Devendra Nath, 110 
Taj Mahal, 434 
Takakusu, 11 . 


■index 


473 


Tak^-Sutra, 237 
Tennyson, 320, 322 
Therigatha, 183 
‘ Thomas, E. J., 18 
Thomas, E. 'W., 18, 305 ' 

Tilak, B. G., 94 
Travancore, 273 
Tnlsidasa, 289 
Turkestan; 112 . 

Ubbirl, 72 . . 

Ujiayinl, 61, 64, 283, 441 
Upaka, G4 
Dpall, 73 

Upper Hooghly Plain, 345, 362, 369, 361 , 376, 
379, 407 

■V^aifiiavana Kuvera, 309 
■Vakatakas, 196 
Yaradachari, K. 0., 123 ‘ 

Vasittlil, 72 
Yedana, 68 
Veluvana, 74 
Vepidatto, 166, 167 
Yedkata Mhdbava, 35 
Vedkataiya, Sri, 34 
Yesall, 136, 283 


Vidyasundar, 20.5 
Vienna, 112 
Vigrahapala, 262 ' 

Vikramaditya, 193 
Vimala, 73 
Vifinana, 68, 69 
Yipaka, 163 
■Vlrarhjendra, 423 
Yiahveskvara Smriti, 207 
Yi^udbarmottara, 141, 221 
■Vizagapatam, 268 
Yogel, 310 

Yrttarainakara-pahcika, 18 

Watson, Sir-William, 320, 321, 324, 329 
Wind and Storm, 367 
Winstedt, Bichard, 1 
Wintemitz, M., 132 

Yajnavalkya, 16 
Yavanas, 131, 209 
Yudhi^hira, 251 
Yueh-ohih, 317 
Yugoslavia, 84 

Zafar Khan, 234 
Zimmer, 281 


ERRATA 

Page 1 Bead ‘ Baud ’ in place of ‘ Land’. 

„ 339 ■„ • rtat’ in place of- ‘the’. . 

„ 416 „ ‘ NavapatrikS’ in place of ‘ Navaputrikh ’. 

„ 463 „ ‘ gulf' in place of ‘ gulph ’. 



• Sir Atul Chatterjee 

It is gratifymg to learn that many friends and admirers of Dr. B. C. Law 
are contributing to a Presentation Volume in his honour. Dr. Law’s services 
to the study of ancient Indian culture have been most valuable, both on 
account of his o\m patient and erudite research into many recondite problems 
and his munificent endo^vments to further similar research by other scholars. 

■ He has set an excellent example and it is to be hoped that he will bo spared. 

■ for many long years to carry on and develop his activities in this sphere. i 

The Late Dr. A. Berriedale Keith 

•' I congratulate you on your attainment of 55th year. It is pleasant to 
tlimh tliat you have accomplished so much wliilo you are still so yoimg. With ' 
all good wishes. 

Dr. F. W. Thomas , 

Your valuable and thoroughgoing contributions to our studies are so 
numerous and extensive that it is difficult to realise tliat in 1946 you will, 
attain an age of no more than 55 years. Having reached 76 early this year 
(1943) I must be regarded as being on the descending pathj but my interest in 
our. perennial studies is Tmdiminished and I look forward hopefull 3 »^ to being a 
living participant in the tribute of appreciative congratulation which will 
reach you on the day. 

Sir Edward Madagan 

You know how most I appreciate what I have read, of yom well-known* 
indological studies. 

Dr. Dasharatha Sharma 

Please find herewith one Sansltrif verse, an humble offering of mine, for 
the Commemoration Volume. I do not Imow whether it will be found good 
enough; but it.expresses fairly well, I believe, the high regard in which I have 
always held you. • 

II II. 


" - . I 

Th^ Hon’ble Mr. Sachchidananda Sinha, Vice-Chancellor, Patna, 
-Umversity' • , . . ^ 

I am a very great admirer of your profound learning and rare scholarship,^' 
and I pray that you may live long to serve the cause of ancient Indian literature